J. M. Barrie and the Russian Dancers

[Robert Greenham]

What with the centenary of Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes being celebrated in London recently, and now news of the auction, today, of a collection of over 700 unpublished letters between members of the Bloomsbury Group, I thought it timely for me to mention a piece I wrote and posted on my Fiery Chariot blog in June 2007.

Some readers of this forum may be unaware of Barrie's involvement with two Russian ballerinas and the link with the Bloomsbury Group.  This would be understandable given that most biographers of Barrie make no mention of these involvements.  My 'J. M. Barrie and the Russian Dancers' piece was an attempt to fill a gap in our knowledge of Barrie.  You will find it here:

http://fierychariot.blogspot.com/2007/06/j-m-barrie-and-russian-dancers.html

BTW, I have posted other pieces about Barrie on my blog.  These may easily be found within the short Blog Archive

[andrew]

Fascinating, Robert - many thanks! I had a short paragraph in my original typescipt about Tamara K, but Constables suggested I cut it. As I may have mentioned elsewhere, I delivered a book that was twice as long as my contract. They initially refused to even read it unless I cut it by half... at which point I walked up to the managing director's desk, lifted the top half of the typescript and handed it to him: "there's your book." "But this is only half the story!" protested the MD, to which I pertly replied, "And where in the contract does it state where the story ends?"  The compromise was that they would publish 80% of my text but that I had to reduce the galleys to 300 pages - hence Tamara's departure. Have you thought of enlarging her entry in Wikipaedia?

[Robert Greenham]

Thank you, Andrew.  I added 'External Links' to my blog article on the Wikipedia pages for Barrie, Tamara Karsavina and Lydia Lopokova. Annoyingly, my link on Karsavina's page was removed last year by some Wiki(d) person.  I will attempt to insert it once more.