LORD DAVID CECIL - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 07/14/1966 - HFSID 73464

DAVID CECIL
The English literary historian and academic types letter requesting information about a Samuel Palmer portrait, signs name in blue ink
Typed letter signed: "David Cecil" in blue ink. 1 page, 7x9. Written on personal letterhead. Oxford, England. July 14, 1966. Addressed to Geoffrey Grigson Esq. of Swindon, Wiltshire. In full: "I seem to be always bother you about Samuel Palmer. Please forgive me. I am now turning my lectures into a book which will need illustrations. I should very much like to reproduce the drawing of him in you book entitled "Samuel Palmer Assuming a Character" by George Richmond. Do you know where it is and who it belongs to so that I can write and ask them? With more apologies for bothering you. Yours sincerely". Autograph post script: "In your book, it just says that the drawing is in a private collection". Lord David Cecil (1902-1986) was a British biographer, historian and academic, whose styling of Lord comes from being the younger son of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury. A sickly child, Cecil developed a love of reading while being almost constantly bed-ridden throughout his childhood; it was while studying history and literature at Oxford that he published his first study on the poet Thomas Cowper titled The Stricken Deer (1929), immediately earning a favorable reputation as a literary historian. He studied and wrote about many English authors such as Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Thomas Gray, and William Shakespeare; eventually falling into a life of teaching, becoming a Fellow of New College, Oxford in 1939 and a Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College in London in 1947, before ultimately returning to Oxford as a Professor of English Literature. His multiple publications include Early Victorian Novelists: essays in revaluation (1934), Lord M, or the Later Life of Lord Melbourne (1954), A Choice on Tennyson's Verse (1971), and A Portrait on Charles Lamb (1983). Normal mailing folds. Toned. Corners rounded. Creased throughout. Slightly soiled on verso. Otherwise, fine condition.