Dom Moraes, autograph manuscript notebook of poems
Details
Type of record: Archive
Title: Dom Moraes, autograph manuscript notebook of poems
Classmark: BC MS 20c Moraes
Creator(s): Moraes, Dom()
Date(s): 1963
Language: English
Size and medium: 1 vol. (80 pp.); manuscripts papers; photograph
Persistent link: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/8555
Collection group(s): English Literature
Description
Small collection of archival material relating to Moraes. The collection includes an autograph manuscript notebook and a file of correspondence, drafts, notes and related material.
1) Manuscript notebook: containing many drafts of poems by Dom Moraes, probably to be dated ca. 1963: Pencilled pagination 1-80 has been added on each page throughout the notebook, which is written from both ends. Dom Moraes has written his name and London address on the inside front cover, and has added the note 'Please return if found'. The notebook has a bright red outside cover and every page has ruled lines.
2) File containing typescripts, manuscripts and ephemera. Includes six typescript poems, one with corrections by the author; ‘1st Rough Commentary as at 31st October’ for the ‘One Pair of Eyes’ film made by Moraes’s then wife, Jude, 5pp. with corrections in ink and blue crayon scrawl on p.1; ‘One Pair of Eyes -Commentary Script’ copy-typescript, 8pp; 7pp manuscript notes relating to ‘One Pair of Eyes’; The Last Post Ceremony at Ypres, 1964, duplicated copy, 3pp with ms. notes; 6pp. typescript and 1p. ms., probably from Moraes’s 1968 memoir, My Son’s Father. The file also contains a small collection of ephemera including a postcard. from John Bunting praising My Son’s Father, letter from Bernard Saint about a poetry Reading at the Lamb & Flag; a typed letter from Elizabeth Thomas at Tribune, a typed letter from Rosalie Murphy at St James Press, 3 typed letters relating to financial problems and a possible eviction in 1968; a small photograph of Moraes with his wife.
Biography or history
Dominic Francis (Dom) Moraes, the Indian poet and writer, was born in Bombay on 19 July 1938, the only child of the editor and author Frank Moraes and his Roman Catholic wife. As a child, Dom travelled with his father throughout South-East Asia and Australasia and began to write poetry at the age of twelve. He went to England in 1954 and became a student at Jesus College, Oxford. He published his first book of poems, 'A Beginning', while he was there, and with it became the first non-English and the youngest person to win the Hawthornden Prize for poetry in 1957. His second book of verse, 'Poems' (1960), became the Autumn Choice of the Poetry Book Society. Apart from these, he published eight other collections of poems, the last being his 'Collected Poems' (1987), and twenty-three prose books, including a biography of Mrs Gandhi and his memoirs, 'Never at Home' and 'My Son's Father'. He edited magazines in London, Hong Kong, and New York, was a correspondent in various wars, and served
as an official of a United Nations agency. He also scripted and directed over twenty television documentaries for the BBC and ITV. He returned to India in 1979 and lived in Mumbai until his death on 2 June 2004.
Provenance
The loose file of manuscripts was bought by Special Collections in December 2021 from Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers.
Access and usage
Access
Access to this material is unrestricted.