The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh Project at the University of Leicester seek help to identify copyright holders of certain letters received by Evelyn Waugh from various writers for permissions to publish such letters in future volumes of their Personal Writings series (numbers 31-41). Their request for information as posted on the internet is copied below:
Orphan Works
An orphan work is a copyright-protected work for which the rights holder cannot be traced. Help us reunite lost works with their “parents”.
The Complete Works plans to publish not only Evelyn Waugh’s personal writings but letters sent from his friends and acquaintances. To do this, we need to acknowledge all copyright-holders properly. Please contact us if you have any information about the descendants of these Waugh correspondents:
Brenda, Lady Dufferin
Waugh comforted her when her husband, Frederick Marquess of Dufferin and Ava was killed in an air accident in July 1930. Ivana and Sheridan Lowell are descendants.
Crease, Francis
Crease was not a schoolmaster but lived about four miles from Lancing College. Waugh visited him for calligraphy lessons.
Fletcher, John Arthur
Wrote a disgusted letter to Waugh in 1930 after reading Vile Bodies, in which he urged the author to take English lessons.
Graham, Alistair
Waugh’s Oxford lover later inspired the character of Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited.
Guthrie, James
Owned the Pear Tree Press in Sussex. Waugh was very briefly apprenticed to him in 1925.
Driberg, Tom
Waugh’s contemporary at Lancing and Oxford. Newspaper columnist and later a prominent Labour politician.
Lewis Hill, James
Waugh’s contemporary at Lancing, who wrote to him in 1921 – after Lewis Hill had himself left the school.
O’Connor, D.M
Waugh’s contemporary at Lancing, who wrote to him in January 1920.
Pares, Richard
Historian. He and Waugh shared a passionate friendship at Oxford.
Plunket-Greene, Gwendolyn
Mother of Olivia Plunket Greene, a Bright Young Thing with whom Waugh was close in the interwar years.
Plunket-Greene, Richard
Olivia Plunket Greene’s brother.
Roxburgh, John Fergusson
Waugh’s headmaster at Lancing College.
Scott-Moncrieff, Charles
Last known copyright-holder was Constance Elizabeth Hannah Scott-Moncrieff, to whom the rights passed in 1947.
Edmund
A pupil taught by Waugh at Ashton Clinton School in 1926-27.
For more information, see this link.
