5308. RB to Frederic Chapman
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 1.
[London]
Monday Mg. [ca. 1864] [1]
Dear Chapman,
I suppose Beeton’s magazine had our leave—indeed, I remember something about it. This Lady [2] seems a poor creature who fancies that because we allow “Other collectors” to print poems, there can be no objection to her collecting and printing. Of course, let her do so, if she likes. [3]
Ever yours faithfully
RB.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Date suggested by stationery, which RB used from late 1862 until early 1865, and the apparent reference to Mrs. Beeton (see the following note).
2. Presumably, Isabella Mary Beeton (née Mayson, 1836–65), author of The Book of Household Management (1861), a huge bestseller, continuously in print (variously titled, enlarged, revised, and abridged) to the present day. “Beeton’s magazine” doubtless refers to The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, founded in 1852 by her husband, the publisher Samuel Orchart Beeton (1831–77). We have been unable to confirm RB’s implication that his or EBB’s poetry appeared there without permission.
3. Mrs. Beeton’s request was for a projected anthology of English poetry, edited by her husband, which was eventually published as Beeton’s Great Book of Poetry: from Cædmon and King Alfred’s Boethius to Browning and Tennyson (1870). In the preface, the editor writes: “More than thrice the number of years have been spent in completing the volume than was reckoned would be necessary in the original calculation of time. … Application was made to the poet or his representatives for permission to print the desired quotations. In nearly every instance the permission was kindly granted” (p. iii). Four poems by each of the Brownings were included: EBB’s “Cowper’s Grave,” “The Child and the Watcher,” “Bertha in the Lane,” and “The Sleep”; RB’s “One Way of Love,” “In a Year,” “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” and “The Lost Leader.”
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