Thank you for publishing updates on the bequeathed Ruth Prawer Jhabvala archive in "Jhabvala’s journals” (Events and Personalities, Parsiana, August 21, 2018).
The slides shared with your magazine came from a recent talk I gave at a public event held in her honor called Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: A Celebration. It involved the participation of actors Simon Callow and Madhur Jaffrey in addition to all the other participants mentioned in your article. The function was held on July 3, 2018 at the British Library where I am the researcher working with and cataloguing the Prawer Jhabvala collection.
The pencil sketch drawing (pictured) by her husband Cyrus H. Jhabvala (referred to by family and friends as ‘Jhab’) that accompanies your article is of James Ivory’s Claverack home near the Hudson River. This same illustration is used in Ruth’s novel My Nine Lives, Chapters of a Possible Past published in 2004. The book explores the possibility of different lives with varied origins and destinies.
Photocopies of this sketch and others by Cyrus are housed in her archive. Cyrus’ skilled pencil drawings reveal the accuracy of his architectural eye for detail. He provided a number of sketches for her book covers and supplied other illustrations for her work.
Claverack was visited regularly by both the Jhabvalas though Ruth spent more time there than Cyrus with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant. Some of her notebooks from the 1970s onwards indicate that it was one of the locations where she wrote. PAULINE McGONAGLE
UK
pm382@exeter.ac.uk