5283. RB to James Thomas Fields
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 299–300.
London
19. Warwick Crescent
Upper Westbourne Terrace,
Oct. 16. ’63.
Dear Mr Fields,
I have been in France for the last two months and, only on returning, find your note.
With respect to your offer of “£60 for the sheets of my new volume, [1] one month in advance of publication,—or £100 for the additional right of printing one or two of the pieces (not printed elsewhere) in your magazine”– [2] I accept it, provided you consider that by the arrival of the sheets six weeks before publication in England, “ample time for the Magazine” will be allowed—I should peril my copyright here by suffering any earlier appearance in America. The poems will be in two volumes, most probably—and, with the exception of a single little thing, [3] none have ever been printed. Will you have the kindness to let me know at once if this arrangement suits?
To tell you the truth, I hardly cared to take the trouble of sending the new Edition [4] —having never got anything for the old, you know, “stereotyped” or otherwise—always excepting “Men & Women” which are fairly your own. [5] I don’t mind for myself, who have been paid and overpaid by the sympathy and warmheartedness of your countrymen—but I am forced to begin to think of my boy’s interests a little–
All kind remembrances to Mrs Fields. Do as well as you can for me, & believe me
Yours faithfully ever
Robert Browning.
My book will come out with the Spring, I should say—not now, because people are attending to the new edition—& so let them.
Many thanks to Mr Higginson for his great kindness in sending his book [6] —if it be to him, and not you, that I am indebted.
Publication: James C. Austin, Fields of The Atlantic Monthly (San Marino, California, 1953), p. 401 (in part).
Manuscript: Harvard University.
1. Dramatis Personæ, published on 28 May 1864. The American edition was published by Ticknor and Fields in September 1864 (see Louise Greer, Browning and America, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1952, p. 119).
2. Two poems and part of another from Dramatis Personæ were printed in The Atlantic Monthly, which was owned by Ticknor and Fields: “Gold Hair,” May 1864, pp. 596–599; “Prospice,” June 1864, p. 694; and “Under the Cliff” (section VI in “James Lee”), June 1864, pp. 737–738.
3. Doubtless, RB was thinking of “May and Death,” which had appeared in The Keepsake for 1857. However, stanzas 1–6 of section VI of “James Lee,” entitled “Lines” (signed “Z”) were first printed in The Monthly Repository of May 1836, pp. 270–271.
4. Poetical Works (1863). The “old” edition refers to Poems (1849), which Ticknor and Fields pirated (see letter 2831, note 8).
6. Out-Door Papers (Boston, 1863) by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911) was published by Ticknor and Fields. It sold as lot 741 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1182).
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