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Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previously published: Charles Ramos, The Letters of Robert Southey to John May: 1797–1838 (Austin, Texas, 1976), pp. 127-128.Dating: year from endorsement and postmark.
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.
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 a variable number of hyphens to give a more exact rendering of their length.
Southey'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.
Here I am, & here I should have been some weeks ago, if a swelling of the eye lid had not made me afraid to put
myself in the mail coach. I ought long since to have written to you: the chief cause occasion of this silence has been
that I am involved in a dispute with the Ballantynes
Mr Walpolesthem him, & if
they have already arrived, as they ought to have done (but there is no faith in carriers) I shall be able to receive them again
while I am in these parts, where I expect to be till the end of October. I have made many extracts from them, & will compleat
this part of the process before I return home, so as to carry back with me all the materials ready to be put together in their
proper form. Then you shall have the Memoir forthwith for revision before it is printed.
I arrived in the mail on Saturday morning, having left all well at home. I am now setting off for Streatham, & told myself will come to you any time during my stay which
may be most convenient to you, after this week.
A commission has been given me to execute which I know not how to set about & which perhaps you will have the
goodness to perform for me. It is to put 25 £ in the three per cents for Sarah Ansell, a servant in the Malone family,
I have a great deal to tell you of my own projects, – & a good part of my poem