Sadow Material

Morris Sadow was a longtime admirer of Sinclair Lewis. He introduced himself to Lewis with a letter pointing out errors in Harvey Taylor’s bibliography of Lewis’s writings, which was published in 1933 as part of Carl Van Doren’s Sinclair Lewis, a Biographical Sketch. This initial letter to Lewis is not present in this collection, although its content can be deduced from Lewis’s reply. The two corresponded thereafter, although they apparently met only once. Sadow was also able to supply Lewis with a number of critical and biographical items from his collection of “Lewisiana” (listed below), which Lewis later returned. At some point, Sadow painstakingly transcribed Lewis’s early writings, and compiled scrapbooks relating to Lewis’s life and career; these items are included in our listing of Miscellaneous material.

Sinclair Lewis / Morris Sadow Correspondence

May 19, 1933 from Lewis to Sadow
Lewis thanks him for his corrections of Taylor’s bibliography: “Yours is quite an extraordinary letter … If there ever should be a new edition of the Van Doren-Taylor book, doubtless the publishers will want to have most or all of your corrections incorporated in it. I am sending your letter, not to Taylor, as I would rather he did not complete the work, but direct to Doubleday-Doran, for the attention of Mr. Harry Maule, the editor, who will have charge of these changes, if they can ever be made …”

May 25, 1933 from Harry Maule at Doubleday to Sadow
“It was rather a shock to find out that there were so many errors and omissions in the Taylor bibliography … I shall be very glad indeed to have a talk with you the next time I am in New York …”

June 4, 1933 from Lewis to Sadow
“I am sorry to have to agree with Mr. Maule against you in the matter of the republication of my earlier work now buried away in minor magazines … Personally I have been rather sorry to see such items as minor occasional verse by Keats dug out of old papers to be republished in definitive editions of his work.”

June 19, 1933 from Harry Maule to Sadow
Maule acknowledges receipt of Sadow’s new address: “I shall keep you in mind if and when we find it possible to take some new angle on the Lewis bibliography.”

Oct. 31, 1933 from Harry Maule to Sadow
He cannot use Sadow’s services at the Doubleday offices.

Feb. 9, 1934 from Lewis to Sadow
“I would be delighted to have lunch with you, were it not for the extremely busy time that I am having just now …”

Feb. 7, 1935 from Margaret O’Leary to Sadow
Lewis’s secretary acknowledges Sadow’s [birthday?] greetings.

Feb. 27, 1935 from Lewis to Sadow
“Have you among your Lewisiana (I haven’t) a scurrilous pamphlet written (if I remember his name correctly) by one William Salisbury … He writes with liveliness, and he made several admirable points against me …”

April 22, 1935 from Lewis to Sadow
“I hope that you got safely the batch of Salisbury’s stuff, which I returned to you from Jamaica … whatever his pretended motives, here is a man eaten with envy as with a cancer — and that just about lets him out as a writer on any subject.”

Dec. 20, 1935 from Lewis to Sadow
He can see Sadow after Christmas: “Mrs. Lewis … will be here until about January 8th …”

Jan. 8, 1936 from Sadow to Lewis [carbon copy]
He is looking forward to their meeting.

Jan. 9, 1936 from Lewis to Sadow
Lewis cannot see him: “I’m off for 3 weeks, possibly 4, in Florida …”

Feb. 4, 1945 from Sadow to Lewis [carbon copy]
Sadow comments on Arrowsmith, and sends Lewis condolences on the death of his son Wells.

Feb. 26, 1945 from Lewis to Sadow
He has finished Cass Timberlane, which will be published in October, and has bought a house in Duluth: “[I] shall settle there, regretfully leaving the metropolitan glories of night clubs at 3 a.m., orange rinds and the traces of dogs on the street, the great new show which proves to be a carbon of either Chu Chin Chow or of the second Mrs. Tanqueray, literary teas, and all these stigmata of success for which we have lived.”

Feb. 8, 1948 from Lewis to Sadow
Lewis confesses to having forgotten him. “I am contentedly buried in the snow [in Williamstown, Mass.], seeing almost no one. I am reading Our Mutual Friend …”

Feb. 23, 1948 from Lewis to Sadow
He now remembers meeting Sadow in Ogunquit, Maine; he is working on The God-Seeker.

May 2, 1948 from Lewis to Sadow
“On a motor trip just recently, running away from work for five days, I stayed in Salem … I did not have your address along, so I could not call you up. I’m sorry.”

Critical / biographical items sent to Lewis by Sadow

These items were received by Lewis in Bermuda, and returned to Sadow in 2 envelopes.

[From] American Literature as an Expression of the National Mind / Russell Blankenship — New York : Holt, 1931. Pages 657-664.

[From] The Strange Necessity / Rebecca West — New York : Doubleday, 1928. Pages 295-308.

[From] Main Currents in American Thought / Vernon Louis Parrington — New York : Harcourt, 1927. Pages 360-370.

[From] More Contemporary Americans / Percy Holmes Boynton — Chicago : University of Chicago Pr., 1927. Pages 179-198.

To Our Nobel Prize Winner : An Open Letter to Sinclair Lewis — New Rochelle : The Independent Publishing Co., [1931]

The Significance of Sinclair Lewis / Stuart P. Sherman — New York : Harcourt, c1922.

Sinclair Lewis / Oliver Harrison [Harrison Smith] — New York : Harcourt, [1925]

[Another copy]

[From] Time Exposures / Waldo Frank — New York : Boni & Liveright, 1926. Pages 131-[137]

[From] The Men who Make Our Novels / George Gordon [Charles Baldwin] — 1st ed. — New York : Dodd, 1919. Pages 225-228.

[From] The Men who Make Our Novels / George Gordon [Charles Baldwin] — 3rd ed. — New York : Dodd, 1924. Pages 321-334.

[From] Contemporary American Novelists, 1900-1920 / Carl Van Doren — New York : Macmillan, 1922. Pages 161-164.

[From] Some Modern Authors / Stuart Mais — New York : Dodd, 1923. Pages 97-104.

[From] More Authors and I / edited by Charles Lewis Hind — New York : Dodd, 1922. Pages 186-192.

[From] How to Study Best Short Stories / Blanche Colton Williams — [s.l. : s.n., 1919?] Pages 129-136.

[From] Spokesmen : Modern Writers and American Life / T.K. Whipple — New York : Appleton, 1928. Pages [207]-228.

[From] Men of Destiny / by Walter Lippmann ; with drawings by Rollin Kirby — New York : Macmillan, 1927. Pages 71-92.

[From] Portraits : Real and Imaginary / Ernest Boyd — New York : Doran, 1924. Pages 183-188.

[From] These United States / edited by Ernest Henry Gruening — New York : Boni & Liveright, 1924. Pages 19-34.

[From] Writing Well / edited by Chester Noyes Greenough et.al. — New York : Macmillan, 1932. Pages 195-200.

[From] The Imtimate Notebooks of George Jean Nathan — New York : Knopf, 1932. Pages 9-22.

[From] The Frontier in American Literature / Lucy Lockwood Hazard — New York : Crowell, 1927. Pages 281-286.

[From] The American Novel Today / Regis Michaud — Boston : Little, Brown, 1928. Pages 127-[154]

[From] American Criticism, 1926 / edited by William A. Drake — New York : Harcourt, 1926. Pages 111-140.

[From] Types and Times in the Essay / edited by Warner Taylor — New York : Harper, 1932. Pages 337-338.

[From] The Nobel Prize Winners in Literature, 1901-1931 / Annie R. Marble — New York : Appleton, 1932. Pages 363-382.