THE LETTERS OF NOEL COWARD
Edited by Barry Day
Pantheon Books (NYP)

This will be the first and the definitive collection of letters to and from the incomparable Noël Coward – a man addicted to corresponding with friends and enemies, the talented and the powerful, including a long list of famous contemporaries. The editor, Barry Day, is widely regarded as the world’s leading authority on Coward. He has been an advisor to the Coward Estate for 20 years and is the only person with unlimited access to the Coward Archive. Only a handful of the 500+ letters to be included have been previously published or even seen by scholars. Thus, publication of this book will be a literary event sure to generate both reviews and extensive off-the-book-page coverage.

Coward was unique – a genuine Renaissance Man who succeeded in everything he attempted. So much so that his activities in any one field often tended to be overshadowed by the very multiplicity of his talents. Even so, his achievements in most of them stand comparison with those with single-focused careers. As an actor he admitted that, were he to appear on stage with Olivier, Gielgud and Richardson simultaneously, "they would act me off the stage and out of the auditorium – but everyone would be looking at me." If he were to be judged solely on his work in film, he would still rank high in the cinematic pantheon as actor, writer and producer. The range of his activities brought him into contact – and frequently led to close friendships – with the great, the good and the merely ambitious in many different walks of life. Coward knew just about everybody who was anybody – as well as those who aspired to be – in the theater, cinema, literature and politics on both sides of the Atlantic and well beyond. He was also a close personal friend of many members of the British Royal Family.

His regular correspondents included George Bernard Shaw, T.E. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the Churchills, Daphne Du Maurier, Alexander Woollcott, Edna Ferber, Sacha Guitry, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Ian Fleming, Katharine Hepburn, Graham Greene, Mary Martin, Claudette Colbert, Ivor Novello, F.D.R., Edith Sitwell, Gloria Swanson, Evelyn Waugh, Fred Astaire, Tallulah Bankhead, Maria Callas, Charlie Chaplin, The Lunts . . . the list goes on. The picture that emerges is less a detailed canvas than a series of vivid sketches of people and events that shaped the 20^th century and of a remarkable man who made his own indelible mark right at the heart of it.

Coward aficionados will and do buy everything by and about "The Master." Unlike many contemporaries, Coward has not dated. Today there are more Coward plays produced around the world than at any previous time. There is also a thriving Noël Coward Society and Coward Appreciation Societies all around the world. But this book will also appeal to anyone who is interested in the history of the arts and particularly theater in the 20^th century. The general public finds Coward consistently intriguing as a symbol of his time. Critic Kenneth Tynan pinned down the way he embodied and inspired a particular style when he said: "Even the youngest of us will know, in fifty years time, precisely what is meant by ‘a very Noël Coward sort of person.’"

When they were published in 1982, The Noël Coward Diaries were greeted as a literary event of major importance and were very widely reviewed. There is every reason to believe that THE NOËL COWARD LETTERS will be similarly received.

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