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E001
[Photograph] Mary Webb, original photograph

  1. 00020881_0001

Original photograph of Mary Webb, 6″ x 4¼″, signed by Webb in black ink, mounted on a leaf of thin tissue, and then on gray board. The tissue mounting is signed: “Dorothy Hickling,” and the board is signed in the lower-right corner: “This was given to me by / Mary Webb and I give / it to F. B. Adams Jr. / Caradoc Evans / January 3, 1938.” Welsh writer, journalist and editor Caradoc Evans was an early friend and supporter of Mary Webb. In 1916, a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement had compared Evans's novel, My People (1915), with Webb's first novel, The Golden Arrow (1916). A sustained friendship began by correspondence after Evans's own enthusiastic review of The Golden Arrow (Coles, The Flower of Light, 1978). After her move to London in 1921, Webb contributed reviews to T. P. and Cassell's Weekly where Evans served as editor from 1923 to 1929. With a typed letter from Evans to Adams, dated January 3, 1937 [sic, should be 1938], saying that he encloses a corrected proof of Mary Webb, and the photograph of her, for Adams to keep. Frederick Baldwin Adams, Jr. (1910-2001) was a distinguished bibliophile and member of the Grolier Club for 64 years, serving as president from 1947-1951. Adams served as director of the Pierpont Morgan Library from 1948 until 1969.