Gerald Murnane: A History of Books

Dear Reader

The following is adapted from one of the seven pages about the life and the writing of Kelemen Mikes in the Oxford History of Hungarian Literature , 1984.

The Letters from Turkey were regarded by critics for a long time only as a source for the history of the exiles. Much futile research was done in an attempt to find traces of the mysterious Countess P— who proved never to have existed. Mikes never sent his letters to any ‘aunt’ but copied them into a letter-book, which was found after his death.

The authors of the books referred to in ‘A History of Books’ are believed to include Miguel Ángel Asturias, Giorgio di Chirico, Charles Dickens, Margaret McKenzie, Mikhail Petrovich Artzybashev, James Joyce, Frank Wedekind, R.C. Sherriff and Vernon Bartlett, George Borrow, John Clare, Christopher Brennan, Thomas Hardy, Herman Hesse, Gerald Murnane, Roger Longrigg, Joseph Conrad, Elias Canetti, Brian Aldiss, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James T. Farrell, François Mauriac, William Styron, Frederick Exley, George Gissing, Henry Handel Richardson, Frank Dalby Davison, D.M. Body, Roy Campbell, Robert Musil, Gyula Illyés, Emily Brontë, André Maurois, Jack Kerouac, Sándor Márai and Halldór Laxness.