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. Previously published: M. Betham-Edwards, ‘Letters of Coleridge, Southey and Lamb to Matilda Betham’, Fraser’s Magazine, 18 (July 1878), 82; E. Betham, A House of Letters (Norwich, 1905), pp. 157–158.
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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I am the worst dealer in the world, & therefore very unfit for an adviser in concerns of
business.that those of sharing the profits with the publisher, & I have never yet been successful enough in the sale way to
feel just authorized in demanding more. But there has been another cause for this, – my hands have been tied, – more perhaps
from a point of feeling on my own part than from any actual necessity, – I have been connected with Longman as a publisher for many years, – he has always answered my drafts, as much to my
convenience at all times, as to his own eventual profit, – & this xxx has kept me hitherto on the wrong side of his
books, tho my share of the property in his hands has always been far more than would turn the balance in my favour. But things being
thus a sense of delicacy rather than obligation makes me go on with him upon the old terms. – You see I am rambling from your concerns
to xx my own: but this statement may serve to show that an arrangement for sharing the eventual profits is not an
unfavourable one, – & that any bargain which secures to you half eventually, & xx puts you in immediate posession of
any part in advance may be considered a good one.
You must see more of the country than you did on your former visit, & therefore I shall delay some purposed expeditions till you arrive.
Come as soon as you possibly can – before the days begin to shorten too soon for the day’s business. Love from all –