Instead of Tears by Marie C. Stopes with an ALS to writer Charles Morgan 1943

Marie Stopes sends her wartime elegy to writer Charles Morgan.

Stopes, Marie Carmichael (1880-1958). Instead of Tears. In Memoriam H.M.S. Cossack. [1943]. With an accompanying autograph letter signed to Charles Morgan, Surrey: Count Potocki of Montalk, 16 July 1943.

Octavo pamphlet, 12 pages, in original blue-grey printed wrappers, priced sixpence. Together with a two-sided autograph letter signed by Stopes, on Norbury Park, near Dorking, Surrey headed paper. Both very good: pamphlet toned towards the edges, with minor handling wear and a faint former paperclip mark; letter lightly toned, without folds.

Sending the enclosed poem before publication, Stopes praises Morgan's The Empty Mirror and Sparkenbroke, describing the latter as "a unique & very nourishing book". She expresses a wish to meet him and invites him to Norbury Park, referring to its connection with Fanny Burney. Turning to her own work, she writes: "Meanwhile I feel - perhaps too trustfully - that you may like the enclosed!" She explains that it is to be published "next Thursday the 22" in this inexpensive form following private circulation, adding: "I would like to feel it reached the people who care about poetry."

The poem commemorates the officers and men lost in H.M.S. Cossack, with a particular dedication to Lieutenant H. William Rose, R.N. First issued separately in a limited edition in December 1942, it is here accompanied by Stopes's own account of its forthcoming wider circulation. Stopes, the scientist, author and birth-control campaigner best known for Married Love, also published poetry and plays. Charles Morgan (1894-1958) was a novelist, dramatist and critic. An advance presentation of the sixpenny edition, preserving its original letter to Morgan.