Lessing, Doris

'The Eye of God in Paradise', two copies, both with autograph corrections in blue pencil, one with additional title-page (signed) and proof corrections in red ink and pencil, 160 pages, 4to, [1957]
'The Day that Stalin Died', two copies, both with autograph corrections in blue ink, one copy with additional title-page and the other with further proof corrections and comments in red ink and pencil, 32 pages, 4to, [1957]
'Excuse Me While I'm Sick by Reggie Jones', with autograph corrections in blue ink, 49 numbered pages plus "explanatory note" (1 page), in a blue folder with a label, [c.1957], APPARENTLY UNPUBLISHED 
[with:] 'Wine', corrected galley proof, 3 pages; 'Flavours of Exile', printed text from London Magazine (1957); 'Through the Tunnel', printed text from The New Yorker (1955) (incomplete), and 'Traitors', printed text from Argosy (1957), all with corrections in preparation for book publication, together with three typed letters signed by Lessing, to Maschler, enclosing copies of these and other stories, 3 pages, June 1957
[with:] 'Dialogue', autograph corrections in black ink, 17 pages, with a covering letter by Lessing to Maschler ("...You said you wanted a new story, for the Paris Review..."), [early 1960s]  
[with:] 'Debbie and Julie', autograph corrections in black ink, 22 pages, [early 1990s]
[also with:] 'The Truth About Billy Newton', rehearsal script, six pages with autograph revisions in blue ink, 83 pages, 4to, c.1960, press cuttings inserted, limp green covers

Much of this group comprises short stories prepared for Lessing's second collection, The Habit of Loving (1957). The book was edited by Tom Maschler, who met Lessing when he persuaded her to contribute to his collection Declaration (see lot 197). This group includes one story, 'Excuse me While I'm Sick', that appears to date from approximately the same period (Lessing gives her address as 58 Warwick Road, where she lived from 1954 to 1958) but was not included in The Habit of Loving and seemingly remains unpublished. It also includes two later stories: 'Dialogue', which was sent to Maschler as London editor of the Paris Review and was published in A Man and Two Women (1963), and 'Debbie and Julie', which appeared in London Observed (1992). It also includes the script of an unpublished play.

Tom Maschler
This lot is from the personal archive of Tom Maschler (b.1933), one of the leading figures of modern British publishing and identified by the Bookseller as one of the ten most influential figures in publishing of the twentieth century. As editorial director at Jonathan Cape from 1960, he was responsible for shaping the literary scene through the publication of authors including Joseph Heller, John Fowles, Doris Lessing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Philip Roth, as well as many of the best English novelists to emerge in the 70s – Amis, Barnes, Chatwin, McEwan, Rushdie. Under his leadership Cape published some 15 Nobel laureates, and his forays into children’s books included bringing together Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake. The ten lots from his collection (lots 188-197) give significant insights into his varied career and literary interests, from Declaration, the collection of essays that made his name, to correspondence with two very different writers with whom he developed a particular rapport – John Fowles and Doris Lessing. They also include a small number of letters by an earlier generation of authors (Raymond Chandler and Malcolm Lowry) that were acquired by Maschler.