1088. James Russell Lowell to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 222–223.
Boston U.S.A. No 4 Court St.
Decr 13. 1842.
My dear Miss Barrett,
It is rather late to acknowledge your kind reception of my little volume of poems, [1] but the pleasant memory of it, as a token of sympathy from a woman who has shown more true poetic genius than any poet of her sex, will be always green & fresh. The volume was published prematurely—(as a young author always feels after a year has passed) some of it was written when I was only nineteen, & all of it before I had finished my twenty first year. When I print another, I shall hope to send you something worthier for me to give & for you to receive.
I write this to ask a favor of you which, as I do it in right feeling, I trust you will not deem impertinent—a quality by which we Americans seem to be more known (or misknown) in England, than by any other.
Owing to the want of an international copyright law here, American authors are forced to compete with the cheap republications of English books, & the consequence is that all our literature is fast taking the periodical & cheap form of magazines. I am about to establish one in Boston which I hope to make an instrument for the elevation of letters here, & for the creation of a right feeling in regard to many important matters. [2]
Might I hope to print a poem of yours every now & then? [3] I cannot afford to pay for it now, for I am poor. But if my enterprise is successful, I shall in time be able to render myself no longer your pecuniary debtor.
I suppose you know Mr Tennyson. Do you think that he would give me something?
Do not look upon this as if I came cap in hand begging for halfpence. If I thought less highly of you, I should not have asked this favor of you. Whether it argues a want of knowledge of propriety in me I cannot say: but I suppose that blood is of the same colour & hearts of the same warmth in England as here. With the truest wishes I remain
yr friend
J R Lowell–
Publication: BAF, pp. 351–352.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
2. Lowell did establish a new magazine, The Pioneer, but only three numbers were published (January–March 1843).
3. EBB’s “The Maiden’s Death,” dated London, 4 January 1843, appeared in the last issue of The Pioneer (p. 112).
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