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Keswick Museum and Art Gallery. Not previously published.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes 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.
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If I had written to my Aunt instead of you, & made no
mention of Kehama,ou
<ought to do>, – for a sailors life is a very dull one, & Tom has no greater pleasure than in receiving one of these little
packets. You know how I am employed, & how much time it would require to transcribe between 4 & 5000 lines. The history of the
poem is thus – I began it at Lisbon & brought with me to this place in 1803 about 900 lines which remained untouched from that time
till my last journey to the South. I had there some talk with Landor, about
my own poem & his.the to me, finish it – & I will print it for you, – this offer stung me to
compleat it. I have as much contempt for ordinary praise as for ordinary censure, but you know in what respect I held Landors Gebir,
notwithstanding all its obscurity. – & there is not that man living whose praise would gratify me so highly – upon such a subject.
As I could not afford to write poetry I resolve to create time for it by rising earlier, – & that resolution I have kept, rising
whenever my rest has not been disturbed by the children. time enough to write about twenty lines before breakfast, – & not a single
line have I written at any other hours than these. It is not finished, but very nearly so, there will be 24 sections (about the average
length of those in Madocd is begun. Longman is to have it on our usual terms, his
advice is that it be printed like Thalaba,me
judice,
The journey of Nuno ValloI x Purchas will be to be purchased, – a pun which I dare say he made upon himself poor fellow, for he was a desperate
lover of punning.
You may see Azaras mapsin fxxxx xxx in <that is to be found in> London. One of the partners is an emigrant who was at Lisbon, &
used to be a good deal at the Gonnes. I met him the last time I was at Champion
Hill,
Staunton is a better place than Streatham ,
which is near enough to London to have all its expences & is heightened, & far enough from it to be out of its
advantages of society &c, – the very worst of all possible situations. Your parishioners Messrs Harris &
Kemble ought to remember the New Price in their Easter dues.
My book will not be ready before Xmas,xx the notes in double columns & in as small a type as can correctly be used, for the sake of
diminishing the bulk of the volume. Your sheets had better be compleated & stitched together as a copy in which you will make
corrections & emendations. So much interest do I feel in this & the other histories, that if I could afford it, I would do
nothing else till the whole series were compleated. The first vol. of the Hist of the Mother Country
If you pass near New Cavendish Street, Miss Betham (No 14) will show you the pictures of my son & eldest daughter, as happily taken as possible. there is also a very good
likeness of Edith, – my own is more penseroso