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British Library, Add MS 47890. 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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A lucky sheet of paper which has been folded up in my pocket-book since July last gives me the power of writing to you – when otherwise lack of paper & Sunday must have delayed me. I am better than before I left Hampshire, not so well as I since have been, & my determination is made to remove to a better climate – but when or where I have not settled.
I met an acquaintance of yours here lately.
Dr Blakes – at
whose table I met him. Another Tauntoneer whom I have seen
is I believe unknown to you – Dr
Kinglake
Your removal to the BellonaBellona was a 74-gun ship of the line, so more
likely to be used in engaging the French fleet and less
likely to pick up lucrative prizes than the smaller Sylph on which Tom Southey had been
serving.
Of late I have done little. Thalaba advances
– towards the end of the eighth book – but it must reach to
twelve – two more than my first plan.
I know not wherefore you amuse yourself by
abusing Burton – if
on my account of my Mothers
health – she never was better anywhere. it is only at Bath
& Bristol that she suffers. if because you do not like the country, we who live there do.
if the house be not fine enough – it is lucky that we are
contented with what we can afford. you damn Burton & rejoice
that my
Mother is at Bristol. Harry has
seen her at Bristol, & can confirm what I tell you, that
at Bristol she is never well & never happy. at Burton she was well
& chearful. here she is the slave of her sisters
humours, & lookd upon by her sisters friends as a sort
of dependant relation, whom they speak to if she opens the
door to them – not if they meet her in the street. believe
me the day on which she returns to Burton, will be a
happier one than she has known since she left it.
The second volume of the Anthology
Rickman is
coming to pass a month at Bristol – chiefly on my account.
he often enquires for you. few men stand higher in my
judgement than John
Rickman. there will be much to interest him here
in the Pneumatic Institution,which
upon which he wishes for an opportunity of talking with you.
Rickmans
head with all his apparent idleness is never unemployed.
Cottle is
publishing his Alfred by subscription.
I have in agitation some prose works. writing
for the paper
Harry is much grown & much improved. good company & instruction have not been wasted upon him. he will in the course of another year be requiring an expence of education which I am afraid we shall not find it easy to defray. I shall not however fail to make my best exertions. if I can get footing in the theatres the profits will be great. travel where I will, the journal will pay [MS torn] journey.
Direct Kingsdown Parade. Bristol. – I am so miserably tense with wind – that government ought to engage me in the fleet – as I could at any time give them a gale. my tripes are now perfectly hurricanized.
y. 1800.