I don't quite know how to answer your letter of March 19th. Privately and verbally, I make no secret of my age, but printing it on the jacket of a book seems to me bad psychology. I don't think it's any of the public's business, and it can very easily give a false impression. My wife is very emphatic on this point, and I have never known her to be wrong in a matter of taste.

Certainly I should agree that if a writer is of any interest to the public at all, the things about him which made him a particular sort of writer are also of interest. I should agree, in my own case, it might possibly be of interest that my education and social background are in almost violent contrast to my ideas about writing. I should agree that it might be of interest to know that a man who grew up in England is, in a literary sense, completely American; that a man who was at [one] time a classical scholar (of sorts) now chooses to write in the American vernacular. But I do not agree that my age, eating habits, the color of my wife's eyes, or what time I get up in the morning, or, in fact, anything of a purely personal nature, is relevant.

The intrusion of publicity-minded people into the private lives of writers seems to me an infinite vulgarity. It took lonely men whom I had never seen or heard of to find out that I could write with some distinction. All the blurb writers were able to see was thrill value. . . .