FREDERICK LEWIS ALLEN - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 09/16/1940 - HFSID 344465

FREDERICK LEWIS ALLEN
The author and editor of Harper's Magazine signs this typed letter regarding a piece of his that was changed by Reader's Digest
Typed letter signed: "Frederick L. Allen" in black ink. 6½x9½. New York, September 16, 1940, typed on Harper's Magazine letterhead to "Dear Mr. Bower" of New York University, in part: "I am enclosing a copy of the Saturday Review in which I have done some copy-editing on that article of mine. You will note that among other things I have taken out the last paragraph which, you will notice, ends exactly like the second paragraph preceding it. That slip filled me with rage when I read the text. [...] When the Reader's Digest people get through with a manuscript it is often livelier but the rhythm has nearly always been taken out." Handwritten postscript: "I don't mean to be rough on The Digest. They are uncannily able at helping writers produce articles crammed with the concrete and specific, and at condensing. But something has to suffer and the rhythm departs. FLA" Frederick Lewis Allen (1890-1954) was an author and American historian. After graduating from Harvard he taught there briefly thereafter before becoming assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly in 1914, and then managing editor of The Century in 1916. His most famous book, Only Yesterday: An Informational History of the 1920s, was published in 1931. Allen was editor in chief of Harper's Magazine from 1941 until his death in 1954. He was also the author of such books as Since Yesterday: The 1930s in America, September 3, 1929 to September 3, 1939 and Great Pierpont Morgan. Lightly toned. Corners rounded. Otherwise, fine condition.