Here is a tale to delight not only collectors of books and manuscripts but collectors of all breeds; for Carlton Lake communicates throughout this lively record the delights of the chase, the driving compulsion that keeps the hunter on the trail, and the final triumph of capture and possession.

LA Times

Carlton Lake

Carlton Lake was the Paris art critic for The Christian Science Monitor. He also contributed to a number of American and European periodicals including The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly—in which appeared, along with his short stories, essays, and conversations with such artists as Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, Henry Moore, and Giacometti. A renown collector of modern French art, literature, and music, Lake donated his collection to the Harold Ransom Center at the University of Austin (where he once held the position of director)—it can still be viewed there today.

cover image of the book Confessions Of A Literary Archaeologist

Confessions Of A Literary Archaeologist

Set in post-World War II Paris, but looking back to the beginnings of the modernist movement, Confessions of a Literary Archaeologist is the adventurous tale of Carlton Lake’s lifelong treasure hunt in building what has been called “unquestionably the finest collection of research materials on modern French literature and the arts anywhere outside Paris.” Drawing on his rich resources of unpublished manuscripts, the author unveils many hitherto unknown or little-known facts about the lives and works of such twentieth-century luminaries as Matisse, Ravel, Gertrude Stein, Cocteau, Valery, Paul Eluard, Alfred Jarry, Satie, Céline, Marie Laurencin, and H.-P. Roché (author of Jules et Jim). Lake also gives nostalgic glimpses of Baudelaire and Rimbaud as well as revealing a completely new view of Toulouse-Lautrec.

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Here is a tale to delight not only collectors of books and manuscripts but collectors of all breeds; for Carlton Lake communicates throughout this lively record the delights of the chase, the driving compulsion that keeps the hunter on the trail, and the final triumph of capture and possession.

LA Times
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