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British Library, Add MS 30927. 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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The vile cold which had just commenced its operations when you left us, is I hope now ending them. The fountains of my
head are choaked up, – which is a previous step to their drying up, & I am resuming my regular employments after this unaccountable
interruption. This morning I finished that section of Kehama which was begun while you were here, & which continues with laying
Ladurlad in the Ship of Heaven.& her commander, & her crew. Tomorrow I land them above the great magnet rock at the North
Pole, – & that <this next> section will have nothing but images of beauty.
Where can Aunt Mary be? I have been daily hoping to hear from her,
& to hear that she was coming this way, – as there can be nothing but the journey now to prevent her.
Jackson has bought a horse, who I think would not be sorry that you are at sea,
if he knew what sort of a thing a sailor on horseback is. – Our bacon is arrived & proves excellent, – & Miss Woodxx affairs are very much improved by the change. the two younger ones have just had the
cow pock.
Who’s this for? said I to Edith last night, when the third kiss was given me on going to bed. For Uncle. What am I to do with it? – Send it in a letter. How am I to send it? – Put it in the letter. How am I to put it? Write it in the letter, – after half a minutes consideration. – Be pleased therefore to take notice, that there is a kiss inclosed herein, for every night since you went away.
Your shirts are at last compleated, washed & marked, & the two parcels one for the coach, the other for the
waggon, will go by the next carrier. The books from Longmans I suppose will be
ready to start within a month. my preface & introduction are printed, & four sheets of the [MS obscured] Neville tells me a third edition of the Remainsxx xx who really wants a friend; because of his disabled arm. Your Commander in Chief
I have begun my Portugueze Letters. – this new book
This is the poem from which the first note to Madoc is extracted:
Little progress has been made in your Kehama,