jones / hague collection

Summary

The correspondence between David Jones (1895-1974) and René Hague (1905-1981) showcases one of Jones’s most intimate friendships. Jones and Hague met at the Catholic artists’ commune in Ditchling, Sussex, in 1924, both under the tutelage of the sculptor and stone mason Eric Gill. Hague was a printer by trade and made the very first printing of Jones’s poetic work, In Parenthesis (1937). Hague would go on to translate the work of Teilhard de Chardin into English in the 1960s. He would also become an important critic and editor of Jones’s work, producing the extensive Commentary on The Anathemata of David Jones (University of Toronto Press, 1977), and the highly selected letter collection Dai Greatcoat: A Self-Portrait of David Jones in His Letters (Faber, 1978).

The letters from Jones to Hague are often joking and familiar, full of drawings and mimicry of voices. Jones and Hague’s friendship brings out some of Jones’s most frank discussions of his own writing process, memories of his early life and the First World War, his thoughts on writers and artists of the period, on modernity and its effects on aesthetics, as well as on aspects of Catholic theology. Towards the end of Jones’s life, when Hague was writing his Commentary, the two wrote extensively on The Anathemata, and the correspondence provides an important frame to Hague’s critical work.

Scope

113 manuscript letters (and five cards) from David Jones to René Hague (dated 1928–1974); some typescript replies of Hague to Jones; typescripts of Hague’s Commentary on The Anathemata with Jones’s annotations (originals held in the Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto)

View the collection here

Key people

Robin D’Souza (coordinating editor)

Funding

The Junior Fellowship Program at St. Michael’s College and the Gilson Postdoctoral Fellowship (both at University of Toronto) allowed Robin D’Souza, who attended the DJDA’s 2021 hybrid TEI training workshop at the National Library of Wales, to arrange for copyright permissions and prepare the Jones-Hague collection for scanning and hosting on the Internet Archive. She would especially like to thank: Loryl MacDonald, John Shoesmith, Natalya Rattan, Kelli Babock, Elizabeth Ridolfo, and Alex White.

Future

Robin continues to work on creating metadata and transcribing the collections in TEI. The Internet Archive does not display TEI and so the DJDA is looking into possibilities for displaying transcriptions of the letters.

Image Credit

Taken from letter of David Jones to René Hague, dated 23 April 1946 (Fisher Library, University of Toronto, MS196, Box 1). Copyright: Trustees of the David Jones Estate.