1768. EBB to Edward Moxon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 241.
50 Wimpole Street–
Monday– [25 November 1844] [1]
Dear Mr Moxon
I am grateful to you for the gift you have sent me [2] —though very little inclined to think of fulfilling the condition (of not reading it) which is so very uncommon a one to be attached by a poet to his poems– Indeed I have glanced through a good many of the sonnets already, & am able to appreciate their refined grace. Surrey seems to have “been with you” in the place of Queen Mab. [3] I thank you much.
For the good news too concerning my own poems, your note was welcome– A sale .. except in a very slow & gradual manner,—is so little to be expected in the case of poetry, that the real truth is, .. I was afraid to ask. And then, that good news gives me hope in another quarter,—because it wd naturally grieve me, on a different ground from one of personal interest & ambition, if my good & kind American friends who have been rash enough to print an edition of fifteen hundred copies in an expensive manner, should suffer ultimately from the speculation. To the kindness of Mr Forster & some of his brethren (I do not say peers) I hold myself deeply indebted– [4]
And I remain
Your obliged & faithful
Elizabeth B Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection.
1. Dated by letter 1771, in which EBB tells of hearing from Moxon that her poems are “selling very well.”
2. Moxon’s Sonnets, privately printed in 1830 and reissued in 1843. EBB’s copy has not been located.
3. Cf. Romeo and Juliet, I, 4, 53. EBB refers to Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517?–47), who is well known for contributing to the development of the English sonnet, as well as introducing blank verse to England.
4. i.e., for his review of Poems (1844) in The Examiner; for the text, see pp. 345–348.
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