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Noël Coward. The Letters of Noël Coward. Barry Day, ed. New York. Knopf. 2007. xii + 780 pages, ill. $37.50. ISBN 978-0-375-42303-1
Noël Coward was a fascinating, brilliant, versatile writer, actor, playwright, director, and lyricist, whose life was filled with friendships with the great and gifted. Someone writing his autobiography is prone to presenting to the world Coward's own version of his life and personality, the way that he sees himself and wishes others to see him. Not so with letters, both sent and received. This lengthy volume (nearly eight hundred pages with commentaries) reveals Coward's complicities, whims, and peccadilloes-perhaps more than we really need to know.
Coward was driven by a need to succeed and please those whose approval he sought. Emotional and, in some...