LOCKE, William John (1863-1930). Novelist.
Collection of 30 Autograph Letters Signed, one Typewritten Letter Signed and three Autograph Postcards Signed to a number of different recipients, together with the autograph pages of notes, 'Suggestions for Young Novelists', 47½ pages various sizes, addresses in London and Hertfordshire etc., 1902-1928.
Formerly Secretary of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Locke became a full-time writer in 1907 and made his main reputation before the First World War. The letters include seven to his literary agent, Albert Curtis Brown; one (probably), to A.A. Milne in 1916 as assistant editor of Punch, thanking him for congratulations on The Wonderful Year ('To charm the rheumatism, even for twenty-four hours, from the leg of an Editor, is indeed a feather in my cap') but apologizing for his inability to contribute to a Book Monthly Symposium, ('The future of the novel is one black fog in front of me'); one to Arnold Bennett, enlisting his support for Theodore Dreiser, whose novel The Genius had recently been condemned by the New York Vice Commission; and one to the dramatist Sir Arthur Wing Pinero about the disputed elections of Milne and Morton to the Dramatists' Club. His nine 'Suggestions' ('If it strikes you that "So & So" wd. make a wonderful character for a story, put the temptation from you like poison') have an agreeably Edwardian flavour.


£350 [No: 2229]