KENNETH LITTAUER - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 03/30/1937 - HFSID 55634

THE FICTION EDITOR OF "COLLIER'S" WRITES TO ONE OF MARGARET MITCHELL'S FIRST BOOK REVIEWERS REGARDING AN UPCOMING VISIT TO THE AUTHOR, WHO WILL WIN THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION FIVE WEEKS AFTER THIS LETTER AND WISHES THE RECIPIENT SUCCESS WITH HIS NEW NOVEL
 
KENNETH LITTAUER. TLS: "Kenneth Littauer" as Fiction Editor, 1p, 5½x6, irregularly cut. New York City, 1937 March 30. On letterhead of Collier's to Mr. Edwin Granberry, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida. Begins: "Dear Granberry". In full: "Many thanks for sending me the enclosed letter. I still can't believe that any editor would be particularly welcome in Atlanta. However, I have my duty to perform and I suppose I shall have to impose myself on the Marshes again. I join with Mrs. Marsh in hoping that your novel is going well. I have been hoping too that you would be sending me a good short story one of these days. Sincerely yours". Enclosure not present. The Marshes were MARGARET MITCHELL MARSH and her husband, advertising executive JOHN MARSH. Mitchell had married Marsh in 1925, shortly before she began her epic novel, Gone With the Wind, which won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (in May 1937, just over a month after this letter) and was made into an award-winning feature film in 1939. EDWIN GRANBERRY, an author and professor at Rollins College, was also a free-lance book reviewer for the New York "Evening Sun". After receiving an advance copy of Gone With the Wind, he had written one of the first glowing reviews of the book on the day of its publication, June 30, 1936. Granberry and his wife, MABEL, had first met Mitchell and her husband, advertising executive JOHN MARSH, at Blowing Rock, North Carolina, the summer campus of Florida's Rollins College, and they became close friends and frequent correspondents. In response to the frenzy over Gone With the Wind, Mitchell asked Granberry to write an "official" article about her. Granberry's article, "The Private Life of Margaret Mitchell", was published in "Collier's" on March 13, 1937, just two weeks before this letter. KENNETH LITTAUER, who died in 1968, was the fiction editor at "Collier's" and a New York literary agent whose clients included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut and James Salter. Littauer was also one of the early sponsors of the Civil Air Patrol. Lightly creased with fold, not at signature. 1/8-inch tear at blank left margin at horizontal fold. Portion of the "C" in Collier's cut away. Paper clip impression and rust stain at lower left blank margin, light paper clip impression at upper left blank margin. Minor rust stains at blank left margin. Overall, fine condition.