TYPED LETTER SIGNED (TLS). 1 page, dated 2 January 1975, to "Dear Kirby" [McCauley], signed "Ed Price." On plain letter-size paper with his Redwood City, CA address typed at top. The single-spaced typing looks like that of an old Royal manual, clogged keys and all. Price apologizes for his lateness in answering McCauley's letter; explains he was visiting the ailing Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett Hamilton. When he got home he had to do some astrological forecasts to make a little money to pay for unexpected house and car repairs. Says he's not surprised at McCauley's downbeat estimation of the commercial prospects of his SILVER SERPENT, a novel set in the Tang dynasty of China (published as THE DEVIL WIVES OF LI-FONG in 1979). "... Don't knock yourself out. I'd like a sale, yes, but I do not need a sale. In 1932, I did need sales, and I made them, and survived as a professional. Today, I've made virtually no sales -- and, happily, I do not need to sell. Lucky, what?" Then he launches into an attack on a recent publishing offer. "One of the fan blob 'limited' illiterates … made me a ridiculous offer. I told him to shove it -- if his outfit couldn't dig up the $1000 advance I said I'd settle for…" Adds that he might go east for an autographing party for FAR LANDS, OTHER DAYS, Carcosa's omnibus anthology of his "fantasy and adventure yarns," with "art work for the comic fans, and other illiterates!" Price was part of that generation of pulp fiction writers whose roots go back to the 1920s. He was on friendly terms with most of the others in that generation, including Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard. Many of his works had Oriental settings. He stopped writing for the pulps in the 1950s but resumed writing in the 1970s. Kirby McCauley was probably the most important literary agent of horror, fantasy and sf writers in the boom years of the 1970s and 1980s. Good content. Faint creases where folded for mailing, two tiny faint stains on blank verso, else fine. (#102663).
Price: $200.00
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