Collection relates mainly to the Ezra Pound work Patria Mia, written in 1912-13 but not published as a book until 1950, and consists of the manuscript of the book, Seymour’s draft for a preface, and sixteen letters between Seymour and Ezra and Dorothy Pound and T.S. Eliot.

Ezra Pound sent the manuscript to Ralph Fletcher Seymour in 1913, but as Seymour explains in the preface to the eventual publication, the manuscript was mislaid and not recovered until thirty-seven years later. Patria Mia first appeared in the English periodical New Age in 1912. On a stiff backing, Pound mounted cuttings of the articles, interspersed with his own typed text and handwritten corrections and insertions, and sent it off to Seymour in Chicago, where it then disappeared until its discovery and publication in 1950.

There are 16 letters in the collection: two from Pound to Seymour relating to copyright issues, 1958 and 1960; one from Seymour to Dorothy Pound and a responding one from her in 1950; and twelve letters between Seymour and T.S. Eliot, written in 1950. Seymour corresponded with T.S. Eliot, then an editor at Faber and Faber Limited, London, about a possible English edition of Patria Mia. Later in the year the two enjoyed luncheon together at the Cliff Dwellers club when Eliot was visiting Chicago, and six of the letters refer to that social event.

Two of the letters, removed from “Office Copy” of Patria Mia (Case Y 245. P86565), have been included in this collection. They are: Pound to Seymour, April, 1960, and T.S. Eliot to Seymour, July 31, 1950.