22 – Contracts

 

Jane Bowles (1917-1973), author

Paul Bowles (1910-1999), executor

Disabled by a stroke in 1957, Jane Bowles’s literary output was limited to one novel, one play, and a volume of stories. After Jane’s illness, Paul Bowles managed his wife’s business correspondence and literary contracts, keeping her work in print and arranging for ongoing publications. Galleys are shown here for Paul Bowles’s introduction to Everything is Nice, in which he described his role in preparing an unfinished story for inclusion in this collection. He also described his wife’s depression and disgust with her situation, recounting how she modified the title of Collected Works that she was inscribing for a friend, “The Collected Works of Dead Jane Bowles.” Jane died after years of incapacitation at the Clinica de Los Angeles in Málaga, Spain, in 1973.

All items from the Paul Bowles papers

Material related to Two Serious Ladies

  1. News clippings of a review and publishing notice:
  2. Francine du Plessix Gray. “Jane Bowles Reconsidered.” New York Times Book Review, February 19, 1978
  3. “New and noteworthy: Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles, Dutton.” New York Times Book Review, September 30, 1984
  4. Bowles, Jane. Two Serious Ladies. London: Peter Owen, 1965. Mockup of the British edition

Material related to copyrights and contracts

  1. United States Copyright Office, Library of Congress. Certificate of copyright registration for Out in the World: Selected Letters of Jane Bowles, 1935-1970, April 9, 1985
  2. John A. Glusman (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux) to Paul Bowles, typed letter signed, June 21, 1994
  3. Audrey Wood (International Famous Agency) to Paul Bowles, typed letter signed, August 21, 1969

Material related to Everything is Nice: the Collected Stories

  1. Bowles, Jane. Everything is Nice: the Collected Stories. Printed cover. Virago Modern Classics. Random House UK, publication date March 8, 1989
  2. Bowles, Jane. “Everything is nice,” undated. Typescripts (two copies), with some autograph corrections in the hand of Paul Bowles, and with some taped-in corrections
  3. Bowles, Paul. [Introduction to Everything is Nice], undated. Mechanical (photocopy) with autograph correction and note from the editor, [1989]
  4. “Bookshop Window: Everything is Nice: the Collected Stories by Jane Bowles.” News clipping. Independent, July 28, 1989