The Business of Friendship: Cyrilly Abels's Letters to Christina Stead

Abstract

Christina Stead's literary agent, Cyrilly Abels, sent boxes of honey from New York to Stead in Surbiton, Surrey. Abels would shop at Maison Glass in New York and send her friend eucalyptus honey from Australia, Black Locust honey from Italy, Saffron honey from France and Wildflower honey from Sweden. Christina Stead gave Cyrilly Abels perfume, a philodendron, a basket of violets and wine. In a large collection of Stead's papers, notes and manuscripts given to me recently there are 126 letters from Cyrilly Abels to Stead, spanning the period 1964 until 1970. These letters and others in the collection from Ruth McKenney, Judith Wright, Elizabeth Harrower, Hortense Calisher, Harold White and Norman Rosten, offer us insights into Stead's friendships during three distinct phases of her life.