Welcome to Litsy!

Here's Virgina Woolf's passport photo I found online. It says she wants to go to... hard to make out... the lighthouse or something. I dunno...

#WritersOnVacation

Gertrude's & Alice's passport photos! Amazingly they were both the same height (at least according to their passports) 5'2.5". Gertrude wrote a note that they attached to Alice's passport which stated Alice was her secretary and she lived with her in that capacity. That's kinda like Donald Trump calling everyone's attention to something only to deny what it really is.

#WritersOnVacation

Apparently (James) Langston Hughes' parents divorced when the poet was quite young. On this passport application, 18-year-old Hughes requests to spend the summer with his father who had moved to Mexico. The bad photo scan takes poetic license and depicts him half in shadow and half in light.

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I can't imagine a more interesting physical characteristic for the poet William Carlos Williams than a "hair whorl back of neck left side." I just love that. This passport is for the doctor and his wife, Flo Herman Williams.

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In 1961, Wm. Faulkner visited Venezuela in honor of its sesquicentennial of independence. He was sent there as a cultural ambassador of the US. As reported on the UVA library's website, Faulkner wrote, "If possible, I would prefer to avoid being asked for autographs by Anglo-Americans, since the addition of my signature to a book is part of my daily bread. I intend, and want, to sign any & all from Venezuelans..."

#WritersOnVacation

While Katherine Anne Porter's photo scan on her passport application isn't very detailed, I love the physical description of her: 5 feet, 3 inches tall (about); medium-high forehead; blue-grey eyes with a short retrousee (upturned) nose and a faint scar on her left eyebrow. The 1920 passport recommends that she avoid Vera Cruz "because of the existence of the bubonic plague..."

#WritersOnVacation

This passenger list finds two writers --pardon the expression--in the same boat. On the first line you find WH Auden, and on the last Christopher Isherwood. They are on the ship Empress Asia leaving Shanghai for Vancouver in June of 1938.

#WritersOnVacation

Despite all the trolls I had to deal with today, I did find this beautiful photo of Edith Wharton attached to one of her passport applications. She's 58 years old and stands 5'5" tall (according to the application). She planned to go to France, Italy and Spain. The photo made this whole dreadful day worth while. Isn't she grand?! #WritersOnVacation

Apparently the Smithsonian archives owns James Baldwin's well travelled passport. I thought this was way cool! #WritersOnVacation

Monday. Back to work with all the old records. If you look at passenger number 2 on this ship listing for the Queen Elizabeth, you'll find JD Salinger traveling first class. Nothing phony 'bout that😏. I guess if you need to hide in your cabin, you might as well get a nice one, huh?

#WritersOnVacation