Correspondence

5475.  RB to George Murray Smith

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 163.

19. Warwick Crescent,

Upper Westbourne Terrace. W.

Nov. 4. ’64.

Dear Mr Smith,

I must, if you please, say at least “thank you” for your kindness. The reason I can’t do as you wish is, that it will be completely done by a more competent person, if the matter can be arranged. [1] There will be the inevitable book-making, in short.

Ever yours faithfully

R Browning.

Publication: Michael Meredith, “Browning and the Prince of Publishers,” Browning Institute Studies, 7 (1979), 8 (in part).

Manuscript: Eton College Library.

1. The previous editor suggests that Smith had “again tried to persuade Browning to join the Cornhill staff,” as he had done in 1862 (see letter 5040). Since May of that year, The Cornhill Magazine had been edited by Smith, Frederick Greenwood, and George Henry Lewes. Lewes resigned his position in October 1864. Another possibility is that Smith had asked RB to write a biography of Walter Savage Landor, the “more competent person” being John Forster, whose Walter Savage Landor. A Biography was published by Chapman and Hall in 1869.

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