Unveiling Confidential Documents of Great Authors
According to the Iran Book News Agency (IBNA), quoting The Guardian, an extensive collection of personal documents and letters from renowned 20th-century authors, many of which had not been published until now, has been discovered in the internal files of the ‘Royal Literary Fund’ (RLF); an organization that provides financial assistance to writers facing difficult living conditions.
Among these documents, Dylan Thomas’s 1951 shopping list, including cigarettes, Irish whiskey, Swiss roll, Guinness, and peanuts, has attracted particular attention from researchers. The collection also includes an unpublished note from Sylvia Plath’s doctor and an unseen letter from Doris Lessing, the Nobel laureate in literature.
These files contain requests for financial aid from authors such as James Joyce, C.S. Lewis, Joseph Conrad, Mervyn Peake, and Edith Nesbit. Currently, some of these are accessible to the public at the British Library, while others are kept at the Royal Literary Fund’s office near Fleet Street in London. The process of cataloging and registering these documents is still ongoing.
These documents record periods of authors’ lives that usually remain hidden in the shadow of their fame: from low book sales and financial difficulties to illness, loss, and family crises.
In Ted Hughes’s application file, Sylvia Plath’s doctor’s note about her hospitalization for an appendectomy is visible. Joyce also wrote in his 1915 letter that he “receives no income from royalties” because the sales of his works “do not reach the necessary level”.
Edith Nesbit, author of “The Railway Children”, wrote in a 1914 letter that the shock of her husband’s death had taken away her ability to write “poetry, romance, and imaginative stories,” which had been her main source of income.
Lessing explained in a 1955 letter that she came to Britain from Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) in 1949 with 20 pounds, and after the publication of her first novel, “The Grass is Singing”, she quit her job and devoted herself full-time to writing. She wrote: “Since then I have lived by my pen, but with great difficulty.” Lessing further mentioned her debts and the lack of financial support from her family and former husband.
She also rejected offers to write commercial crime screenplays, believing that while lucrative, such work “would prevent the writing of serious works”.
Ezra Pound, in a letter supporting Joyce’s application, emphasized that Joyce had “lived in poverty and obscurity for ten years to be able to complete his works without commercial pressure.” He considered “Ulysses” an uneven work, but described “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” as “valuable and enduring.” This letter played a crucial role in Joyce receiving financial aid.
Dylan Thomas, who benefited from the fund’s support between 1938 and his death in 1953, wrote in his 1938 application: “I have been living by writing for five years, and almost all this time I have been in poverty… Now my wife is pregnant, and our situation is very critical.”
At that time, due to the long interval until the fund’s next meeting, his application was referred to the “Royal Benevolent Fund,” an entity that was later dissolved. However, the government’s response was sharp: “Should Thomas, who at 23 is unable to support himself, have married and started a family?”
According to the “Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society” report, the average income for professional writers in Britain has been stated as £7,000. Edward Kemp, the current director of the Royal Literary Fund, says that the economic problems of writers today are in some cases “more severe than in the past.” He adds that “contracts for mid-list authors are constantly decreasing,” and large publishers “only pay significant sums to a small number of authors.”
In recent years, authors such as Ali Smith, Monique Roffey, Anna Burns, and Hanif Kureishi have also received grants from this fund.
Mervyn Peake, author of “Gormenghast”, first applied for aid in 1948 to complete the second volume of his series. In the 1960s, as his illness worsened, his wife submitted another request in 1961, writing: “He has been ill since 1956… It was initially thought to be depression, but later diagnosed as brain inflammation followed by Parkinson’s disease.”
Research indicates that Peake likely died due to Lewy body dementia.
The RLF has announced that between 2023 and 2024, emergency aid requests have increased by 400 percent. The condition for receiving a grant is having two published works, and these grants are provided for living expenses, medical care, and unforeseen costs. A significant portion of the fund’s financial resources comes from authors who have bequeathed their literary assets to the fund; these include Somerset Maugham, A.A. Milne, and Ronald Blythe.
Kemp says: “When you look at these letters, you realize that many writers you might have thought had comfortable lives and good incomes did not.” He concludes: “Our institution’s old motto speaks the truth: sometimes bad things happen to good writers.”
