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Victoria and Albert Museum, National Art Library Manuscripts, MS Forster 48 D.32 MS 5. 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.
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.
Edith is recovering & my anxiety on that score is over. She has been very
ill, & there was a great danger that the illness would bring on premature labour; – that danger however is past. In about six weeks
I look to have another child.
Your draft was put in circulation. – I believe Kehama would never have been resumed had it been not been for
you.market success)
will only thus far influence me, that a good sale would make me afford more time for other such poems, which I should then publish as
fast as they were written, – its still-birth (which I entirely expect) will merely make me write others as this is written, in the
early morning hours, which I shall continue to do as long as the unabated power is in me, & leave them behind as post-obits for my
children, in perfect confidence that such manuscripts will prove good & secure property hereafter. At Edinburgh I shall feel my way
about the publication
When the obnoxious line was written I thought of better Painters than the Exhibitioners, – of those whose creative
powers entitle them to be mentioned any where; – it is however an ugly word, – because it always reminds one of the house-painter.putting rhyming <most of> those
parts whi[MS obscured] were rhymeless, – a task which is yet to be compleated.
Take your Letters to G RequelmiArthegal to regenerate us.
The first volume of my History of Brazil is in the press.look search back into the past history of mankind, & to look on to their future destiny. The present is but a
great drama where I feel rather as a spectator than one of the performers.
y. 21. 1809.