Maxwell E. Perkins, famed editor of such literary luminaries as
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings, and Thomas Wolfe, was a man whose personal and
professional lives often intersected. Nowhere is this more evident
than in his correspondence with Elizabeth Lemmon, the Virginia socialite
who became his long-distance confidante. Despite the platonic nature
of their relationship, others realized the intensity of their connection.
The letters contained in As Ever Yours, published here for
the first time, reveal an epistolary love story—and they provide
fresh insights into Perkins the man and Perkins the editor.
Max first met Elizabeth in 1922 at the Perkins home in Plainfield,
New Jersey. Immediately drawn to her stark beauty and southern charm,
he struck up a correspondence with her that lasted until his death
in 1947. As Ever Yours contains 121 of Perkins's letters
to Lemmon as well as the 20 extant letters from Lemmon to Perkins;
the rest are presumed lost or destroyed. Letters from Fitzgerald
and Wolfe also shed light on the pair's dynamic relationship.
The letters make for compelling reading as Perkins details his
personal life in New Jersey and Connecticut and his professional
life in the New York publishing world. The writers he discovered,
edited, and encouraged at Charles Scribner's Sons emerge as endearing
and believable characters, brought to life in Perkins's vivid narrative
voice. He is witty, self-deprecating, and painterly in his descriptions
of people and locales together with the social milieu of his day.
Protected by distance, Max used his letter-writing relationship
to unburden himself in a way he could not with his coworkers, his
authors, or even his wife—and these letters simultaneously highlight
his editorial judgment and disclose his private feelings.
Expertly edited by Rodger L. Tarr, As Ever Yours will be
important to students and scholars of the history of publishing.
The Perkins-Lemmon letters illuminate the thoughts and experiences
of the greatest literary editor of the twentieth century.
