THOMAS (DYLAN) Autograph notes signed ('Dylan Thomas'), with group of pamphlets re the English F...

THOMAS (DYLAN) Autograph notes signed ('Dylan Thomas'), giving a critique of the performance of Margot Park as The Duchess of Malfi at the English Festival of Spoken Poetry, 28 July 1948, ('...she saw the Duchess as a woman being, not now a tragic figure, but an attractive & charming young creature: but the attraction & charm shd have been given a bitter, ironic edge, & should be based on tragic realisation...'), written in pencil, titled 'Dramatic Final/ Margot Park' and numbered '17' in biro in another hand at head, one page, light dust-staining and creasing, 8vo (210 x 168mm.); with ten further pages of criticism along the same lines from fellow judges such as Patric Dickinson, George Rostrevor Hamilton, and Ruth Ritter, three titled 'Lyric'; a copy of the printed timetable for the festival with Miss Park's pencilled annotations; and six copies of The Syllabus of the English Festival of Spoken Poetry for the years 1939 (as The Oxford Festival of Spoken Poetry), 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, and 1954, dust-staining and marks, creasing and small tears, original card wrappers, lower cover and last page detached from 1939 issue, 4to (252 x 194mm.), [Oxford and London, 1939-1954] (small group) Footnotes: 'SHOULD BE BASED ON TRAGIC REALISATION': DYLAN THOMAS AT THE FESTIVAL OF SPOKEN POETRY. Dylan Thomas was one of the judges at The English Festival of Spoken Poetry in 1948, an amateur competition of poetry recitation founded in the 1920's in Oxford and, after the war, relocated to London. The list of patrons and directors for 1948 is impressive, and includes T.S. Eliot, Edith Sitwell, Walter de la Mare, Edmund Blunden and Cecil Day Lewis (who famously fell in love with his second wife Jill Balcon at the festival). The competition was run and judged by poets, who were gently teased by Thomas in an article published in The Listener (5 August 1948, vol.40, issue 1019, p.24) and broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 30 July: '...The judges... lofty uncompromising not-to-be-bribed-or-trifled-with ascetic remote creatures who (if only the competitors could know)... sit there in their perspiring glory, thinking of cricket and ice and legs, their little hearts thumping among so many summery flowered dresses, bright smiles, untrammelled youth, high heels, endeavour, scent and zeal...'. He speaks amusingly and rather fondly of the festival, which he evidently enjoyed: '...There is, in many people, a need to share enthusiasm, which is often expressed in behaviour known, nicely, as 'showing off'; common to actors, poets, politicians and other trapezists. Many people who read poems like some of them so much that they cannot keep their liking to themselves...'. Provenance: Margot Park (1919-1992) who had a lifelong interest in poetry, drama and music. She qualified as an elocution teacher with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1940, and numbered the actress Patricia Routledge among her many pupils; thence by descent. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing