Special Delivery: The Letters of C.L.R. James to Constance Webb, 1939-1948

by C.L.R. James, Anna Grimshaw, Constance Webb

C. L. R. James's correspondence with Constance Webb, the young American woman who eventually became his wife, began in 1939 and lasted a decade. Passionate, poetic, and wonderfully readable, the letters chart an extraordinary friendship and gripping period in the life of C. L. R. James as a revolutionary activist in America.
Beginning with James's first letters to Webb (written whilst visiting Trotsky in Coyoacan, Mexico) and ending with his letters from 'exile' in Nevada, the correspondence is simultaneously an intimate record of a romantic relationship and a profound meditation on politics, art, and American civilization. Whether debating with Richard Wright in New York, lecturing in Los Angeles, or singing arias aboard ship in the Gulf of Mexico, James is always a superb traveling quick to draw historical and political lessons from everyday life, and always able to illuminate experience through art.
Something powerful was unlocked by James's experience of America. And at the centre of this experience was his attempt to bridge the gap of race, age, and gender between himself and Constance Webb. Already celebrated while unpublished, these letters form one of the major resources on James's life and thought during his American period. But they also tell a story as intellectually stimulating as it is affecting.

393 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1995

About the author

C. L. R. James (1901–1989), a Trinidadian historian, political activist, and writer, is the author of The Black Jacobins, an influential study of the Haitian Revolution and the classic book on sport and culture, Beyond a Boundary. His play Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History was recently discovered in the archives and published Duke University Press.

Reviews

[Matthew Quest · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of letters is often read (or misread) as merely love letters by CLR James to Constance Webb. People debate whether James was manipulative, flirted well, or looked for an aspect of himself missing in his personality through love. Whenever this is the emphasis, one finds the reader has no appreciation for the vivid and analytical commentary on philosophy, art, history, literature and political strategy found in these letters. It is a mine of ideas. I am always finding something new in this volume whenever I read these letters and mark them up again and again. Harriet Tubman, Shakespeare, Stanislavsky, Trotsky, Richard Wright, sojourns to Mexico and Nevada, and the importance of Germany to political theory are all found here.