3009. RB to Edward Chapman
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 31.
Paris, Avenue des Champs Elysées 138.
Feb. 23. ’52.
Dear Sir,
I am much obliged to you for the Accounts. [1] I have no doubt they are as correct as they are circumstantial. The only point that a little surprises me is, that, should all our books sell to the last copy, we shall receive such a trifle by comparison with what luckier authors get daily—if one may trust report. I don’t complain that people won’t buy poetry, but think it a little hard that when they do buy, for instance, 700 copies of a two volume work, [2] my wife is only to get a good deal within what Moxon gave me the other day for a preface which might have been comprised, had I stuck to the agreement, within 25 or 30 pages. [3] I am glad that the sale on the other books goes on surely if slowly; let us hope that next June’s account will show better things. Meanwhile, I hope you will be good enough to send my wife the Balance due to her on her Poems. Our publications are all separate speculations, and you will not, I am sure, be accessory to making her repent that she married me, poems and all! Mr Forster will kindly take care of the money, I know.
Ever yours faithfully,
Robert Browning.
Address, on integral page: E. Chapman Esq. / 193 Piccadilly.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. That RB requested in letter 2995.
2. Poems (1850).
3. EBB had reported in letter 2992 that Edward Moxon paid RB “fifty pounds” for his introduction to Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1852). The introduction ran to forty-four pages.
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