Material from the Romantic Circles Website may not be downloaded, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without authorization unless it is for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and/or classroom use as provided by the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended.
Unless otherwise noted, all Pages and Resources mounted on Romantic Circles are copyrighted by the author/editor and may be shared only in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Except as expressly permitted by this statement, redistribution or republication in any medium requires express prior written consent from the author/editors and advance notification of Romantic Circles. Any requests for authorization should be forwarded to Romantic Circles:>
By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions:
Users are not permitted to download these texts and images in order to mount them on their own servers. It is not in our interest or that of our users to have uncontrolled subsets of our holdings available elsewhere on the Internet. We make corrections and additions to our edited resources on a continual basis, and we want the most current text to be the only one generally available to all Internet users. Institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at Romantic Circles, subject to our conditions of use.
BL Add. MS 30809, ff. 50–51
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editors wish to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
All quotation marks and apostrophes have been changed: " for “," for ”, ' for ‘, and ' for ’.
Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.
Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard
Dashes have been rendered as —
Bloomfield's spelling has not been regularized.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
Your former letter I answered as immediately as I could but not so immediately as I ought. Your 2d gives me great pleasure in all respects were it not that I doubt from it your health is not fully recovered.
I suppose the agreement is upon a proper agreement stamp so as to be in a state to be given in evidence if necessary & that you have a duplicate of it in your possession also duely executed and stampt.
I wish to be remembered to Mr Hill whom I hope that you will find well & happy.
A musical friend at Thetford (as all musical friends have been to
whom I have shown them) is greatly pleased with your songs to Hooke’s
lessons.
It is very [illegible word] that going up at a moment’s notice & you know in what roads & weather & scarcely having an instant to spare I did forget, not having your letter by me, that you had written to the Duke of Grafton. I am very happy in the Result and thank you for your friendly attention as to the other matter.
I would write to you in London but you have given me no address.
I think I informed you of the sudden & unenviable fate of poor dear little comet. For some days & while the delightful February days and starlight nights continued we were [illegible word] pleased with the beautiful appearance of Venus and its moon. About 3 days short of the new moon darkness is found with frost I own that I have almost enough of it.
This is the anniversary of our marriage Mrs Lofft Sara & Laura are all well: Capel at school: Nancy on a visit at Stanton.
As you say nothing to the contrary I hope that Mrs & Miss Bloomfield & the rest of your family are well.
Would not this be the time to propose publishers in a neat but cheap & popular form Richard & Kate. If separately publisht my opinion has always been that there is scarcely a cottage where the owners or any of their children can read in where it would not be. And it is very desirable that it should for the same reason I have wisht an edition of the Farmer’s Boy such as [? ]ingham & [? ]by have publisht of the Lessons should be separately publisht for general use.
The case appears to be very distinctly candidly I already stated.
The Law of copy-right, by the case decided, appears [illegible word] thus
Where an authour in his life have parted with his whole copy right generally in a particular work if he survives the 14 years the Purchaser by such general [? consent/covenant] have the benefit of the reversionary 14 years given to the author as his assignee under the [illegible word] of [? mone]y.
But where, as was done properly in the agreement in question, the author makes an agreement expressly for 14 years,—if he survives that term or so much as was unexpired at the term of the agreement he is at liberty to make a new agreement as to that work.
The printing of a stereotype edition of your other works publisht since the Farmers Boy successively does not prejudice that right, but leaves it as it were, as to the Farmers Boy. The other works though publisht with it in this stereotype edition by your consent stand upon their own separate footing & distinct periods of publication.
In this upon the statement of the case I see no difficulty or doubt in point of law or equity.