David Gascoyne papers

The collection consists of texts of diaries, poems, prose works and correspondence of David Emery Gascoyne, poet, critic and artist, with collections of critical work on him and other collections of poetry, prose and other matter made by him and his wife Lorna Judith Tyler, afterwards Lewis, afterwards Gascoyne (hereafter referred to as Judy Gascoyne).

British Library arrangement, based on the arrangement of the files as received by the British Library.

Unrestricted

Purchased from Stephen Stuart-Smith, executor of David and of Judy Gascoyne, 2010.

Background to the papers may be found in Robert Fraser, Night Thoughts: the surreal life of the poet David Gascoyne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) and in Colin T. Benford, David Gascoyne: a bibliography of his works (1929-1985) (Ryde: Heritage Books, 1986).

The majority of Gascoyne's papers were acquired by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (GEN MSS 529) for which there is an on-line summary catalogue at http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/about/blogs/poetry-beinecke-library/2007/08/31/david-gascoyne-collection. Other papers are in the Berg Collection, New York Public Library. The British Library also holds six tapes of Gascoyne's interview with Mel Gooding, recorded Mar 1991, in its National Life Story Collection, Lives of the Artists, C466/03. Items in the British Library and elsewhere related to special correspondents or works of Gascoyne are shown as related material in their respective descriptions.

Many of the works in the collection are published in Gascoyne's Collected Poems (London: Oxford University Press, 1956); Collected Poems 1988 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Selected Poems (London: Enitharmon Press, 1994); Collected Verse Translations, edited by Alan Clodd and Robin Skelton (London: Oxford University Press, 1970); Selected Verse Translations, edited by Alan Clodd and Robin Skelton (London: Enitharmon Press, 1996); Selected Prose, 1934-1996, edited by Roger Scott (London: Enitharmon Press, 1998). These are referred to hereafter by their titles alone. Reference to the publication of works in books or periodicals is made in the descriptions of those works.