While Edward Gorey sent signed postcards to fans who wrote to him, Stephen Sondheim answered his fan mail with concise personal letters. I am a Stephen Sondheim enthusiast, but it never occurred to me to write him a letter - nor for that matter did I ever write to Mr. Gorey asking for an autograph. The passing of Mr. Sondheim on November 26th has unleashed an avalanche of memorabilia being shown on social media and also being offered for sale.
For my birthday this past week, I received what can only be described as a Holy Grail piece of Sondheim/Gorey memorabilia - a personal letter from 2005 wherein Sondheim is thanking a friend for the gift of a Gorey booklet, also mentioning that he has a significant collection of Edward Gorey's early books.
A newly formed Instagram page focusing on Mr. Sondheim's correspondence recently showed a letter from 1984 to the same recipient as the 2005 letter now in my collection. In this earlier, more formal missive, Mr. Sondheim credits Burt Shevelove with introducing him to Gorey's works (this earlier letter is not in my collection). I do not know whether Gorey and Sondheim ever met; certainly both were involved with theater successes during the same time period and shared a love of language. A collaboration between the two would have been a fascinating project!
Also being sold recently have been some letters from Sondheim to Andreas Brown of the Gotham. Sadly these don't reference Gorey but instead concern an early Sondheim script that Brown was trying to sell called "Climb High". He had clearly asked Sondheim about some pencil notations in the script and Sondheim seems to think that they are Burt Shevelove's! So, all the right players to have a conversation about Gorey but no evidence that they did!
ReplyDeleteyes, I originally included this information in this blog post but removed it since it did not pertain to Gorey.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for writing this. I bought one of the Gorey lots at the Sondheim auction at Doyle and was looking for provenance of his interest in him. This is perfect.
ReplyDelete