ABSTRACT
Kenneth Pople begins his 1991 biography of Stanley Spencer with a ‘Preamble’ in which the reader is introduced to Stanley’s writing. This is no accident. By the end of his life it is estimated that Stanley had accumulated a body of written work of some two to three million words. Now housed largely in the Tate Gallery Archive in London, they comprise 88 long notebooks, 13 extensive diaries and over 900 extended pieces of writing – from musings on the backs of envelopes, to jottings in pencil on tracing paper extending to hundreds of sides. Often the writing takes the form of letters. Stanley wrote letters throughout his life: when as a soldier away from home during the Great War; when courting Hilda in the 1920s and then communicating with a married, divorced and even dead Hilda; and when keeping in contact with an extensive network of friends, lovers and family throughout Britain. But there is a sense in which even in his letters Stanley is keeping up a conversation with himself, writing impulsively to and about himself (some letters were sent, many others never were).
