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Darling Pol: Letters of Mary Wesley and Eric Siepmann 1944-1967

Darling Pol: Letters of Mary Wesley and Eric Siepmann 1944-1967

by Mary Wesley (Author), Mary Wesley (Author), Patrick Marnham (Editor)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2017

    $5.98
Synopsis

Published here for the first time, this remarkable cache of letters reveals the great love story of Mary Wesley's life. `They met by chance in the Palm Court of the Ritz Hotel on the evening of 26 October 1944. By the time she eventually caught the train back to Penzance two days later they had fallen in love and Eric had declared that he was determined to marry her...' Before her death in 2002, Mary Wesley told her biographer Patrick Marnham: `after I met Eric I never looked at anyone else again. We lived our ups and downs but life was never boring.' Eric Siepmann was her second husband and their correspondence - lively, intimate, passionate, frustrated - charted their life together (and apart) with unusual candour and spirit. Marnham suggests that through these letters Mary, who famously blossomed as a novelist in her seventies, a decade after Eric's death, found her voice. Bequeathed to Marnham in two size-5 shoeboxes, this is one of the great surviving post-war correspondences. `With you I can become the person I really am - and bearing the grave in mind be buried as such. Dear love consider yourself kissed' Mary, 30 October 1944 `I find you brave and amusing, understanding and beautiful, simple and sophisticated, and I love you. More than that, I mean to get you' Eric, 5 December 1944

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 320
 Edition: 01
 Publisher: Harvill Secker
Published: 26 Oct 2017
ISBN 10: 1911215108
ISBN 13: 9781911215103
Book Overview: Published here for the first time, this remarkable cache of letters reveals the great love story of Mary Wesley's life.

Media Reviews
Passionate, erotic, honest, funny and also supremely sad... superbly edited by Wesley's biographer Patrick Marnham -- Nicholas Shakespeare * Spectator *
a lovely, entertaining and moving book -- Sara Wheeler * Literary Review *
It seems extraordinary that Mary Wesley had to wait until she was in her seventies to become an acclaimed author. These letters, written to her lover Eric Siepmann, and edited by her biographer Patrick Marnham, show that she was already a brilliant writer in her thirties -- Lynn Barber * Sunday Times *
Highly readable -- Ysenda Maxtone Graham * Daily Mail *
Her letters are cheerful, resilient and funny, full of sharply observed vignettes of her life in Devon. -- Jane Shilling * The Oldie *
Author Bio
Mary Wesley (Author) Mary Wesley was born near Windsor in 1912. Her education took her to the London School of Economics and during the War she worked in the War Office. She also worked part-time in the antiques trade. Mary Wesley lived in London, France, Italy, Germany and several places in the West Country. She used to comment that her 'chief claim to fame is arrested development, getting my first novel published at the age of seventy'. That first novel, Jumping the Queue, was followed by a subsequent nine bestsellers: The Camomile Lawn, Second Fiddle, Harnessing Peacocks, The Vacillations of Poppy Carew, Not That Sort of Girl, A Sensible Life, A Dubious Legacy, An Imaginative Experience and Part of the Furniture. Mary Wesley was awarded the CBE in the 1995 New Year's honour list and died in 2002.Patrick Marnham (Edited by) Patrick Marnham was born in Jerusalem, educated at Oxford and is a member of the English Bar. He is the author of several books, including the bestselling Wild Mary, has been translated into seven languages and has won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Prize, the Marsh Biography Award, and been nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe Award. He has been literary editor of The Spectator, was the first Paris correspondent of the Independent, and has worked as a BBC scriptwriter and broadcaster and as a special correspondent and war reporter.