 | |  |
James B. Pinker, who was a literary agent for such figures as Joseph Conrad, Arnold Bennett, Ford Madox Ford, John Galsworthy, A. E. Housman, Henry James, D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, and H. G. Wells, took on James Joyce as a client in 1915, at Wells' suggestion, and remained his representative until his death of pneumonia during a business trip to New York in February 1922. The agency was taken over by J. B. Pinker's sons Eric, Ralph, and James, but Joyce's reliance upon the firm dwindled after the elder Pinker's death. The years that J. B. Pinker handled Joyce's affairs had seen the successful publication of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses as well as reissues of Chamber Music and Dubliners, while in the years following Pinker's death Joyce found himself less dependent upon the agency's services, having by then been established as an important author.
Although Ezra Pound sometimes disparaged Pinker's abilities and his function in Joyce's career, liking to count himself solely responsible for Joyce's rise, Joyce had confidence in his agent, and knew him to be a better man of business than himself. It was Pinker's role not only to stand as a bulwark between Joyce and the world of business, but to dissuade Joyce from the various schemes of others and to protect him from his own impulse towards hucksterism. It is a credit to Pinker's reputation as a literary agent, in view of Joyce's frustration at not seeing his work quickly in print and in spite of the complexity of Joyce's maneuverings among many minor publishers, both continental and British, that he remained dedicated to his client's long-range interests, preferring to wait upon established houses and insisting on decent contracts between author and publisher.
Pinker's letters in the Cornell Joyce Collection contain information involving Joyce's contracts with Grant Richards, B. W. Huebsch, and Harriet Weaver and the Egoist magazine. They help chart the migrations of Joyce's manuscripts, and document the sources and amounts of some of his meager income during the period, besides serving as a useful companion to those collections of letters dealing with Joyce's business difficulties already published ("Grant Richards to James Joyce," Studies in Bibliography, XVI; "Harriet Weaver's Letters to James Joyce," Studies in Bibliography, XX; and, of course, Stuart Gilbert's and Richard Ellmann's Letter of James Joyce).
These letters, fifty-one in all, are in good condition, typewritten on business stationery headed "James B. Pinker, Literary and Dramatic Agent, Talbot House, Arundel Street, Strand, London, W. C.," and all signed "J. B. Pinker," except letter Cornell Number 965 signed "James B. Pinker," Numbers 1012 and 1015 signed "Eric S. Pinker," and Number 1011 signed "Eric S. Pinker for JBP." Cornell Number 1014, and the enclosures with Cornell Numbers 985 and 998 are handwritten account sheets on ledger-lined paper headed "In Account with James B. Pinker, Talbot House, Arundel St. Strand. W. C."
Any editorial corrections or emendations of these letters are described in the text, only headings, closings, and signatures being omitted here for compression. The brief notes which follow many of the letters are included in order to specify related letters, to identify some of the people mentioned, and to clarify some of the remarks whose significance may be lost in a one-sided record of correspondence.
| | |