Bellow, Saul

An important archive of autograph notebooks and typescripts of Humboldt's Gift and the unfinished novel Zetland.  [Chicago, London, Spain, v.p., c. 1970–1975]



The collection comprises: Autograph notebook of a portion of Humboldt's Gift, inscribed and signed ("For Barley with love, Saul.  W. I. P."), 48 pages (including 3 detached) (12 1/4 x 8 1/8 in.; 311 x 206 mm).  Original blue wrappers; faded —  Autograph notebook of a portion of Humboldt's Gift, 32 pages (one detached) (12 3/4 x 8 in.; 324 x 203 mm).  Original cloth-covered wrappers.  Laid in: 2 pages of typescript (paginated 217 and 218), one with corrections in Bellow's hand, accompanied by carbon copies; also an autograph postcard from Alison Scotter(?) (29 April) — Autograph notebook of portions of Humboldt's Gift  and Zetland (written dos à dos to one another), Vrnjacka Banja [Serbia], 17 June 1970, 88 pages (11 1/4 x 8 in.; 285 x 203 mm).  Original half cloth, marbled boards; some wear.  Laid in: 2 pages of typescript (on one leaf) paginated 17 and 116, with corrections in Bellow's hand — Autograph notebook signed ("Saul Bellow") of portions of Zetland, 67 pages (10 1/4 x 7 1/2 in.; 267 x 190 mm).  Original stiff printed wrappers, white tape spine — Typescript of the opening section of Humboldt's Gift, with numerous autograph corrections, additions, deletions, 47 pages (11 x 8 3/4 in.; 278 x 216 mm); some browning or fraying at extremities of some leaves — Carbon typescript inscribed and signed ("2nd draft. Saul Bellow") of the opening section of Humboldt's Gift, 47 pages (11 3/4 x 8 3/8 in.; 323 x 213 mm), with a few autograph additions; horizontal fold.  Accompanied by a manila envelope, inscribed by Bellow to Barley Alison — Two typescripts of the first chapter of Zetland, with numerous corrections, additions and deletions in Bellow's hand, 16 and 10 pages (11 x 8 1/2 in.; 278 x 216 mm); some browning and discoloration in margins of some leaves.



 



 

Barley Alison — by descent to the present owners

Atlas, Bellow: A Biography, 27, 440-1

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A highly important collection of manuscripts and corrected typescripts of portions of Bellow's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Humboldt's Gift (1975) and lengthy fragments of his unfinished novel Zetland, from the collection of the author's British editor and close friend Barley Alison.

Barley Alison (1920–1989) was Saul Bellow's editor first at Weidenfeld and Nicholson, and later at Seker and Warburg.  James Atlas, in his biography of the author, describes Alison as "an ideal editor for Bellow."  During the 1970s, Alison's vacation home on the Costa del Sol was "Bellow's favorite retreat," according to Atlas.  In the years leading up to the publication of Humboldt's Gift in 1975, Bellow gave Alison the various notebooks and typescripts he worked on in her Spanish retreat and in her London flat.  One of the notebooks is inscribed to her.  The envelope containing the carbon copy of the first chapter of Humboldt is inscribed, "Dear Barley—These carbon pages, not to leave all eggs in one basket, may be discarded after I've reached Chicago.  I am leaving a suit too, which I'll pick up in Dec.  I am overburdened, and I hope you won't curse me on moving day.  It's [Edward] Shils you see — Shils & his formal dinner at Peterhouse.  Forgive the imposition.  Love, Saul."  Barley Alison was part of the entourage which accompanied Bellow to Stockholm when he accepted the Nobel Prize in 1976.  After Alison's death in 1989, Bellow wrote to her family, "She was a dear and devoted friend and one of the most generous persons I ever knew."

The Bellow manuscripts collected here represent a fascinating glimpse into the creation of two related romans à clef— one a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the other an unresolved and eventually abandoned project.  It is clear from the presence of both stories in the same set of notebooks that Bellow was working on the two projects in tandem.  Humboldt's Gift, of course, is Bellow's examination of his friendship with the poet Delmore Schwartz.  Zetland was the name Bellow gave to his fictional character based on the writer Isaac Rosenfeld, whom he had known since childhood in Chicago.  During his lifetime, Bellow only managed to publish a fifteen-page fragment as a short story, "Zetland: By a Character Witness."    The Zetland story in the present set of manuscripts begins with Zetland and his wife living on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village in the early 1950's and continues with Zetland's misadventures while teaching at Princeton.  The published short story is an abbreviated chronicle of Zetland's life from childhood in Chicago to his marraige, his move to New York to attend Columbia, and ending with his leaving the university for the Village. 

The Humboldt manuscripts in the present collection are of even greater interest than the Zetland material.  They all appear to be from the early stages of composition.  In the notebook inscribed to Barley Alison, the narrator is called Orlevsky and differs in many ways from Charlie Citrine, the Bellow character who ends up narrating the novel.  On the first page of the notebook, above Bellow's inscription to Alison, he has written, "Mr. Orlevsky must have had it wrong for years, thinking that he had a lucid eye, cold when coldness was appropriate, and having found sincerity and vigor in his heart he began to enjoy making shrewd judgements."

By the time Bellow reached the second draft of his first chapter, he had dropped Orlevsky for Citrine.  The opening paragraph of the novel, in these versions of the second draft, is markedly different from the published version.  It begins, "It so happened that I, Charlie Citrine, lanky, ambling, bald, with kinky black hair, became eminent, while my friend Von Humboldt Fleischer dropped dead."

All the manuscript and typescript drafts in this collection are filled with important and revealing additions, deletions, revisions, and excisions in the author's hand.  The present archive is the most significant collection of Saul Bellow manuscripts to appear at auction since the sale of the manuscripts and typescripts of Mr. Sammler's Planet (Sotheby's New York, 7 June 1988, lot 67).  Included with the present lot is a photocopy of a manuscript draft of chapter 5 of Mr. Sammler's Planet.