 |
Two years have passed since the centennial of the great English
novelist and complicated man within, Graham Greene (1904-1991),
an event much celebrated at this Library with a major exhibition
and symposium. Featured were such speakers as acclaimed novelist
Shirley Hazzard; navigator Michael Richey; and English writer
Oliver Walston, son of Greene’s famous love, Catherine
Walston. The recent acquisition of several related manuscript
collections ensures the Library will be verdant for years to
come.
Michael Richey, Shirley Hazzard, artist Lincoln
Perry and his wife, author Ann Beattie, above Naples in October,
2000.
Shirley Hazzard, author of the bestselling Transit of Venus
(1980) and the National Book Award-winning The Great Fire (2003),
also wrote a fascinating memoir, Greene on Capri (2000), an account
of her friendship and that of her late husband, writer Francis
Steegmuller, with Greene. Ms. Hazzard recently presented her
Greene archive to the Library, a donation in honor of curator
of manuscripts Nicholas Scheetz. Apart from some thirty letters
by Greene, including a long and important one to Dr. George W.
Weber about Capri, the gift comprises the book’s original
manuscript, as well as correspondence from friends of Greene
and admirers of the work. Represented are historian Hugh Brogan;
Laetitia Cerio of Capri; Yvonne Cloetta, Greene’s last
companion; writer John Gregory Dunne; spy novelist Joseph Hone;
poet J. D. McClatchy; British eccentric James H. Money, author
of the gossipy Capri: Island of Pleasure; Michael Richey; and
Greene biographer Norman Sherry, among many others. The library
is most grateful for this superb archive.
Another generous donor is Dr. David Austin of Barksdale, Texas.
In 1960, then just down from Cambridge University, Dr. Austin
went to work in Naples, Italy for three years with Father Mario
Borrelli’s program for street boys, Casa Dello Scugnizzo,
made famous by Morris West’s Children of the Sun (1957).
The gift includes letters by Msgr. Bruno Scott James, whose papers
are also at the library; a long series from Dom Ralph Russell;
Graham Greene; Dr. Elisabeth Moor, the subject of Greene’s
An Impossible Woman; and Dr. Eric B. Staus, Greene’s psychiatrist.
Dr. Austin never met Greene, but the novelist allowed him and
Fr. Borrelli to use his house on Capri as a haven to write Fr.
Borrelli’s autobiography, characteristic of Greene’s
kindness to young writers.
The Library also thanks the Seattle Opera for donating two banners
heralding the opera of Greene’s The End of the Affair,
by composer Jake Heggie, which was performed in Seattle in 2005. |
|
