On poetry, painting, and politics

This book presents to the reader a banquet of delights, the letters between art and manuscript collector John Quinn and William Morris's daughter May. For nearly three-quarters of a century, most of the correspondence has been housed in the John Quinn Memorial Collection of the New York Public Library. May Morris, whom David and Sheila Latham call "the most indispensable scholar on Morris," fell in love with Quinn in 1909 and the two began a correspondence that lasted until 1917.

In her introduction, which places the correspondence in its literary and historical context, author Janis Londraville explains that the Morris-Quinn affair was doomed from the start. After May set sail for England in 1910, Quinn quickly lost romantic interest in her. He continued the correspondence as long as he did because he was sincerely interested in May's work and wanted to support her efforts. But there was no chance of a marriage.

Although he had several mistresses during his life, Quinn avoided commitment and remained a confirmed bachelor. The center of his life was his law practice, and his free time was spent on his art and manuscript collection. Over the years, Quinn owned artwork by Brancusi, Braque, Manet, Matisse, Picasso, Rousseau, Seurat, and Van Gogh, to mention a very few. He owned most of Joseph Conrad's original manuscripts as well as Eliot's Wasteland and Joyce's Ulysses.

. The fifty-five letters between May and Quinn and the editor's discovery of May's forgotten play, Lady Griselda's Dream (reprinted here for the first time since 1898) make this volume the key that unlocks hitherto unknown information about William Morris's youngest daughter and "the man from New York."