Career
She was a major stockholder in the publishing firm of Faber and Faber Limited and the editor and annotator of a number of books dealing with her late husband"s writings. Valerie Fletcher, a native of Leeds, married, almost 38 years her senior, on 10 January 1957. She had been a star-struck fan of since her schooldays, as she confided to the novelist Charles Morgan, for whom she worked as a secretary.
Morgan used his influence to get her a job at Faber & Faber, where she finally met in August 1949, a debt of kindness which she always acknowledged.
In a 1994 interview with The Independent newspaper she recalled a very ordinary home life of evenings spent at home playing Scrabble and eating cheese, stating "He obviously needed a happy marriage. He wouldn"t die until he"d had lieutenant" Following T. South. "s 1965 death, Valerie was his most important editor and literary executor, having brought to press The Waste Land: Facsimile and Manuscripts of the Original Drafts (1971) and The Letters of Technology South.: Volume 1, 1898-1922 (1989).
She assisted Christopher Ricks with his edition of The Inventions of the March Hare (1996), a volume of "s unpublished verse. A second volume of Technology South. "s letters was edited by his widow and long-delayed.
One of Valerie "s most lucrative decisions as executor was granting permission for a stage musical to be based on her husband"s work Old Possum"s Book of Practical Cats.
This became the hit Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats. In late 2009, the second volume of "s letters was published. The third volume, edited by Valerie and John Haffenden, followed in July 2012.
She donated the £15,000 annual prize money for the T. South. Valerie died on 9 November 2012 at her home in London.