A remarkable literary letter in which novelist Cecil Roberts launches an extraordinary attack on fellow Nottingham writer Alan Sillitoe, revealing a rare and highly personal glimpse of post-war literary rivalry across two generations.

Bibliographic Details

Author: ROBERTS (Cecil, 1892–1976), English journalist, poet and novelist; Subject: Alan Sillitoe (1928–2010), Nottingham novelist and one of the "Angry Young Men".
Title: Original typed letter signed with numerous autograph manuscript corrections and insertions.
Place: Le Grand Hotel, Rome.
Date: 24 December 1971.
Format: Two typed pages on cream watermarked hotel stationery with printed gold heading and foot.
Recipient: Addressed "My dear Philip".
Signature: Signed "Cecil".
Size: Approximately 25.2 × 17.3 cm.

Condition

Very Good. Folded for posting with light creasing to the lower panel and corners. Very short closed tear to one fold. The manuscript revisions and signature remain clear and bold throughout.

Please ask if you require a more detailed condition report, or examine the gallery images closely.

Description

An exceptionally revealing literary association letter in which the prolific English novelist Cecil Roberts delivers a candid, often savage, assessment of fellow Nottingham author Alan Sillitoe and his celebrated novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Written from Rome on Christmas Eve 1971, the letter provides a fascinating insight into the cultural divide separating two generations of Nottingham writers whose visions of the city could scarcely have been more different.

Roberts (1892–1976) had established his reputation long before the emergence of Britain's post-war literary realists. Cosmopolitan, internationally successful and closely associated with an older literary establishment, he found little sympathy with the gritty social realism championed by Sillitoe and the writers later labelled the "Angry Young Men".

The immediate catalyst for the letter was Roberts' discovery that Saturday Night and Sunday Morning had appeared in paperback. Having finally decided to read the novel, he reacts with undisguised hostility:

"I found it such a filthy, ghastly book that I would not touch it..."

Rather than praising its realism, Roberts dismisses the novel as a sensational success appealing to changing public tastes:

"It struck the new Beatle public, that likes filth and disorder."

He then turns his attention to Sillitoe personally, recalling his own Nottingham connections and contrasting them sharply with the younger writer's bleak portrayal of the city:

"My friends said he was a 'nasty piece of work', a Commie and bitter about everything."

Roberts continues by defending his own experience of Nottingham against Sillitoe's famous depiction of working-class life:

"Nottingham is my home in the Sun... Nottingham dislikes As. It intensely for the horrible picture he gives of life there."

Although he acknowledges that Sillitoe's childhood district had since disappeared beneath redevelopment, Roberts insists that the author's bitterness remained:

"This diatribe remains. I have therefore very purposefully kept my mouth shut on the novel, and never said or written a thing."

He goes on to explain that he deliberately avoided reviewing the book because doing so might have appeared to be motivated by professional jealousy:

"If I reviewed the paperback it would be advertising it, and there would be so much jealousy attributed to me because it is all too obvious."

The letter concludes with Roberts explaining that this is the first time he has expressed these opinions openly:

"This is the first time in my life I have told anyone about all I hear of As."

The manuscript corrections and insertions throughout demonstrate Roberts carefully refining his language before dispatch, adding an extra layer of immediacy to an already unusually frank piece of correspondence.

Today, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is recognised as one of the defining novels of post-war Britain, celebrated for its uncompromising depiction of working-class Nottingham and adapted into the acclaimed 1960 film starring Albert Finney. Roberts' letter therefore acquires particular historical significance, preserving the reaction of an older generation of English writers to the emergence of the new social realism that transformed British literature during the 1950s and 1960s.

Letters discussing Sillitoe in such forthright terms are rarely encountered. Combining substantial literary content, strong opinions, manuscript alterations and the direct relationship between two important Nottingham authors, this is a highly desirable document for collectors of modern English literature, literary correspondence and post-war cultural history.

Notes

An exceptional literary letter documenting the clash between two generations of Nottingham writers. Roberts' outspoken criticism of Alan Sillitoe and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning offers a rare first-hand perspective on one of the defining shifts in twentieth-century British literature.

Especially desirable for collectors of modern literary manuscripts, Alan Sillitoe, the Angry Young Men, Nottingham history, English fiction and association correspondence.