In a Jan. 21, 1971 letter to Kay and George Bird Evans, Nash alluded to "trying to put together a last book of 'rather unusual' mixed contents." Sometime in the very late 1970s or early 1980s, Irma Witt Buckingham, Nash's daughter, approached the publisher Alfred Knopf with what she referred to beforehand as a "large assortment of material" with the idea of publishing a book. (Knopf had been a gunning companion of Nash's on more than a few occasions).
Knopf referred the project to a professor of English literature who taught creative writing at Rutgers University whom he knew as an ardent waterfowler, and whose graduate student at the time shared an even greater interest in the project. They met at least once with Irma, after which the graduate student (majoring in ornithology) was selected as lead research investigator for a Smithsonian Institution expedition to remote areas of Central America to collect and catalog rare birds.
The supposed 9-month assignment was extended to nearly 2 1/2 years. During that time, Irma and the Rutgers University professor came to an impasse as to certain aspects of the material to be published, and the project was terminated. On her last visit to Alfred Knopf in New York City, Irma visited the professor and expressed her regrets, handing him as she left a small cardboard box containing approximately 50 handloaded Western "Leader" 3-inch 12 ga. shells, saying that they were among the contents of Nash's desk at home collected after his death. Later, when the graduate student returned from the Panamanian expeditions, the professor gave them to him as a sort of a "consolation prize" for, as the professor put it, "having missed the whole shootin' match."
The "large assortment of materials" presented by Irma may or may not have formed the basis for the later publication of Nash's Autobiography or may have played a part in the assemblage of the "Letters to John Bailey."
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