Correspondence

4602.  EBB to Edith Story

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 179.

[Rome]

[ca. 10 February 1860] [1]

<***> [I write] by Pen’s desire. He is not well, and prays you to send him for solace a certain “Family Robinson,” says he, “by Mayne Reid,” [2] and to be sure not to remember against him his having “blotted a book of yours last year.” I doubt the connection between Mayne Reid and Robinson, but speak as I am bidden. Poor child, he wants a book of some kind.

Text: Henry James, William Wetmore Story and His Friends (London, 1903), I, 370.

1. Approximate dating based on EBB’s reference to Pen’s cold, which is mentioned in letter 4599.

2. The English Family Robinson: The Desert Home, or the Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness (1852) by Mayne Reid (1818–83).

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