3618. RB to James Thomas Fields
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 251–253.
London,
Septr 6. ’55.
Dear Sir,
I received your reply to my letter on the subject of my new collection of poems, a good while ago—but thought it would be better to write no further till I could speak positively, as I now can. You say “Shall we offer you 10 pr cent on the retail-price of the book or shall we send you £30 outright.” I find that my poems* are grown so considerably as to fill two books, not one. The first is before me, in the same type & form as “Maud,” but with 260 pages instead of 154: and two thirds of the second volume are printed—(it will extend to the same number of pages.) [1] My publisher will bring them out at the end of October or beginning of November, I believe– You see, there are therefore two books to dispose of: and if I accept your offer of £30 outright and at once,—shall I ask too much if I hope you will treat as two books, what,—if I pleased to spread it out into what is technically styled “a shy volume,”—would easily make four of the “Maud”-size? [2] But I wish to make the greater impression by a broad-side rather than a succession of poppings. These poems, too are all new entirely—unpublished I mean. They are the best of me, hitherto and for some time to come probably—and I have given my whole mind to the correcting & facilitating. Only two critics have seen the first vol: yet—but they are our best, in my opinion. [3] And all of their judgment that it becomes me to report is, that the work will sell. I propose therefore that you should give me two thirty pounds for two books: say so, and I will at once transmit the proofs to you with my best wishes for your success as well as their own. I am glad you have gained enough by Tennyson’s Poems [4] to be able to give him something: & you will remember me in like pleasant manner when you conscientiously can, [5] I make no doubt. With respect to what you say of wishing to publish my wife’s new poem were it possible—you are the judge of the possibility. I received a note from Mr Curtis months ago telling me that Mr Francis offered her 50 dollars for her new poem,—and meant to print it whoever should buy it. Shortly after I met at Florence a friend [6] of Mr F. who was surprised to hear I was not in the habit of being paid by that gentleman. This friend now writes that Mr F. determines at present to offer—for two stereotypes and seven editions of the old poems,—nothing: [7] and for the new poem, if of 3000 lines, 50 pounds. I beg your strict secrecy on this till we get the money, as I have no manner of doubt the least excuse for keeping it back would be a Godsend. If you can buy the poem, which will be of nearer 8000 than 3000 lines, we will sell it to you: if you can buy the other poems, with corrections and many important additions, we will sell them also. If not—as I say—please let us get this £50 if you can, by keeping my confidence inviolate. I am going to revise thoroughly and do justice to my poem of “Sordello,” now a long while withdrawn from circulation, and make another volume of my works out of that and “Strafford”—which your poor Margaret Ossoli criticises as taken from “Sterling’s Strafford” [8] —printed years after it. If you choose to pay for them, you shall have them a year before they are published in England—and that out of real love and respect to my American readers of whom I am duly proud whether they pay me or not. You see, Dear Mr Fields, I take the short way with your friendliness as it deserves– Pray do what you can for us—and tell us the sum of it by return of post, R B. care of Chapman & Hall, Piccadilly,—or I shall have left London.
We are very well—& my wife’s cordial greeting goes with that of
Yours very faithfully
R Browning.
*They will be under a distinctive name, which I don’t mention yet.
Address: James T. Fields Esq. / (Messrs Ticknor & Fields) / Boston. / U.S.
Docket, in recipient’s hand: from Robt Browning Recd Sept 22d a/c Sept 25th.
Publication: Ian Jack, “Browning on Sordello and Men and Women,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 45 (Summer 1982), 186–187.
Manuscript: Huntington Library and University of Texas.
1. Aside from the four pages of front matter, RB is correct as to the total number of pages in volume one of Men and Women, but volume two, also with four pages of front matter, came to only 244 pages, the last three being blank.
2. Maud, and Other Poems (1855), as published by Moxon, came to 162 pages.
3. John Forster and William Johnson Fox; see the seventh paragraph in letter 3630.
4. RB refers to Poems (1842), for the copyright of which William Ticknor (Fields did not join the publishing firm of Ticknor and Reed until 1843) paid Tennyson $150 (£30). There is no record of further payments, despite the many editions that followed (see The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson, ed. Cecil Y. Lang and Edgar F. Shannon, Jr., Cambridge, Mass., 1981–90, 1, 261n). In October 1855 Tennyson received £30 from the firm (now Ticknor and Fields) for Maud (see 2, 133), which was issued in Boston on 18 August 1855 (see John Olin Eidson, Tennyson in America, Athens, Georgia, 1943, p. 130).
5. i.e., Fields was to remember that RB had received nothing for the American edition of Poems (1849), published by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields at Boston under an 1850 imprint.
6. John Alexander Clinton Gray (1815–98), a successful New York merchant, whose literary friends included William Cullen Bryant and Charles Kingsley. Gray and his family travelled in Europe from early 1853 to mid-1855, during which time he and his wife, Susan Maria (née Zabriskie, 1814–1904) met the Brownings. RB refers to him by name in letter 3665.
7. C.S. Francis’s piracy was worse than that. Besides the seven American editions of Poems (1844) that RB mentions (though one of these may have simply been a second impression—see letter 2977, note 14), Francis had already published three pirated editions of Prometheus Bound, and Other Poems; Including Sonnets from the Portuguese, Casa Guidi Windows, Etc. (see Warner Barnes, A Bibliography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Austin, Texas, and Waco, Texas, 1967, p. 109).
8. RB has misremembered. Margaret Fuller did not claim that his Strafford (1837) was “taken from” John Sterling’s Strafford (1843), which was also a verse drama. She did suggest, however, that both works were written “at about the same time” (see her review of Strafford in vol. 12, p. 378).
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