(Dame) Frances Yates (1899–1981), Reader in the History of the Renaissance at the Warburg Institute 1956–67, published The Valois Tapestries in 1959 and Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition in 1964. To read the latter book, Trevor-Roper declared in a review in the New Statesman, was to begin ‘an intellectual adventure’. At the time of the book’s publication, Frances Yates’s name was barely known. Already 65 years old, she emerged diffidently from the relative obscurity of the Warburg Institute, with which she had been associated since the war. She was unmarried, and lived quietly in Surrey with her sister. Her homely appearance belied her intellectual power. ‘She was so liberal in her communication, so eager and friendly in discussion, and spoke with such open charm, and with such a gleam in her eye,’ Trevor-Roper wrote after her death in 1981, ‘that I often saw her not as the formidably erudite scholar which she was, but as a benevolent, matronly lady, over-generous in her distribution, in a village sweet-shop.’ He was one of her earliest and most steadfast supporters. Some thought his enthusiasm for her work eccentric; others that it did him credit. In the following letter he urges her to employ the services of his own literary agent, A. D. Peters.
History Faculty Library
Dear Miss Yates
I am so glad you enjoyed the J. Walter Thompson seminar,1 in spite of the preliminary muddles. So did I. And I specially enjoyed your paper. But then I enjoy everything you write: I regard you as one of the few people who really make the complexity of the intellectual climate of the past vivid and intelligible. I would like to see the Collected Works of Frances Yates in every library.
I have already spoken to Margaret Stephens at A. D. Peters (Peters himself is in America at present). I have explained your position and your eminence, and Miss Stephens is delighted, and I am sure you will, at the same time, both gain financially and shed a lot of trouble. I used to deal directly with Macmillan. Then I put myself in the hands of Peters. My relations with Macmillan remain excellent, and I am spared all bargaining.
I think—indeed, am sure—that everything you write is important, and anthologising publishers and reprint companies will certainly want to use it. Such companies, especially in America, reckon that authors are a vain class who are so glad to be in print that they will grant the right to reprint with heedless delight. But these companies operate for profit, and as the labourer is worthy of his hire, they should (and will) pay. Whenever I get any such request, I just send it to Peters. He knows what to ask.
I will certainly visit you at your institute—after due warning given. It was a great pleasure to meet you and I hope we shall meet again soon.
yours sincerely
Hugh Trevor-Roper