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

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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 companion: 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 Already celebrated while unpublished, these letters form one of the major resources on James's life and thought during his American period.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.