Lot #69
A single page, typed by Leonard Cohen with handwritten notation in Cohen's hand across the top of the page that reads, "Sent this To Roland Gant." Gant spent his publishing career in London working briefly for Secker and Warburg in the 1960s, likely in 1963 when they stepped up to published Cohen's first novel, The Favourite Game.
Cohen began working on the novel, originally titled Beauty at Close Quarters, after receiving a $2,000 Canada Council grant in 1959. This grant allowed Cohen to live a modest life in London and on the Greek island of Hydra while he wrote. Upon returning to Canada in 1960, he submitted the manuscript to his publisher, McClelland and Stewart, who rejected the manuscript suggesting substantial revisions without guaranteeing publication.
Secker and Warburg agreed to publish the work in October of 1963, but Cohen had to significantly reduce the length of the manuscript to create a more concise narrative. This page, sent to Cohen's Viking New York editor Cork Smith, indicates that he sent this humorous and fantastical "biography" to Gant in London. In addition to the biography Cohen lists his then published works Let Us Compare Mythologies and The Spice-Box of Earth, with a list of people that he felt could help below. Irving Layton's name leads the list with other novelists, critics and television personalities following.
The final lines of Cohen's biography are among the most amusing reading, "In Montreal, where I always return, scene of the steep streets which support the romantic academies of Canadian Poesy in which I was trained, seat of my family, old as the Indians, more powerful than the Elders of Zion, the last merchants to take blood seriously. I accept money from governments, women, poem sales, and, if forced, from employers. I have no hobbies."
8 1/2 x 11 inches
PROVENANCE: From The Collection of Cohen's Viking Press Editor Cork Smith
