LAWRENCE CLARK POWELL - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 11/02/1974 - HFSID 73578

LAWRENCE CLARK POWELL
The leading American librarian and author updates a friend on current projects, including his recent publication winning the Southwest Book of the Year, signs name in black ink
Autograph letter signed: 'Larry" in black ink. 1 page front and verso, 7½x10½. Written on personalized Zamorano Club presidential letterhead. Original envelope included. Tucson, Arizona. November 2, 1974. In full: "Dear Connie - Thanks for your good long letter & enclosures. You don't mention it, but I hope you are selling Southwest Classics - certainly my best to date. It has just been chosen SW book of the year by the Border Librarians assn. (Texas, New Mexico,, Chihuahua) & I fly over to El Paso 2 weeks from today for the awards dinner. Too bad about Mrs. Mathias's ditherings, but I must admit that Santa Cruz on Monterrey Bay is a happier place for Jeffers than Tucson in the Sonoran Desert! And the new librarian there, David Heron, is one of "my boys." And so is Pete! Sad to learn of David Magee's trouble. Reynolds had written me, but not that it is a terminal case, alas. I am well along on a first draft of the Arizona book & have till next summer to finish it. Norton will publish the series in hard & soft covers, hopefully in 1976, but I doubt that they can have all 50 done in time. I teach here only in the spring & so have the time. Enclosed is a notice of a conference I have planned. Wish you could come! I'll go on writing for Westways every other month. I want to do profiles of Tome Len & of Paul Horgan, among others, but they will have to wait until the Arizona book is done. Much love to you, dear Connie; you are such a good correspondent I can never match you!". Lawrence Clark Powell (1906-2001) was an American librarian, literary critic, bibliographer and author of more than one-hundred books. Powell studied at Occidental College, later earning his doctorate from the University of Burgundy in Dijon and his Certificate of Librarianship from UC Berkley in 1937. He gained his literary reputation as the University Librarian at the UCLA Library and head librarian at the Williams Andrews Clark Memorial Library from 1944 to 1961, after which he was named the first dean of the School of Library Service at UCLA (later the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies). After retiring in 1966, Powell moved to Tucson where he worked as Professor in Residence for nearly two decades at the University of Arizona and played an instrumental role in the growth of their Graduate School of Library Science. A Lawrence Clark Powell Memorial Lectures is held in Tucson annually in his honor, and the Fay and Lawrence Clark Powell Endowment for Southwest Research continues to support Powell's interest in the geography of the southwest United States. His works include Books: West Southwest: Essays on Writers, Their Books, and Their Land (1957), The Southwest of the bookman (1974), An Orange Grove Boyhood: Growing Up in Southern California, 1910-1928 (1988), and Eucalyptus Fair: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel (1992). Powell was for a time President of the Zamorano Club, a Los Angeles -based group of bibliophiles who collected first editions and manuscripts of early volumes on the history of California. Normal mailing folds. Toned. Corners rounded. Light surface creases. Otherwise, fine condition.