5805. John Thornton to RB

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 127.

Wycliffe Villa, Stockport,

Oct. 18– 1866

Dear Sir,

May I venture to ask if you can tell me where I can procure a photograph of your dear wife. If I dared to do so, I would ask you if you could spare me a scrap of her handwriting. There is to my own mind so much value in these relics of those who are now “before the throne.” [1]

I was much pleased to see “The Cry of the Children” in Cassell’s Penny Readings. [2] Through this popular medium I have no doubt it will be read in many an assembly and many a house & thus promote the benevolent design of its gifted authoress[.]

Yours very respectfully,

John Thornton

Robert Browning Esq

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Fales Library.

1. Revelation 4:6.

2. EBB’s poem appears in Cassell’s Penny Readings, ed. Tom Hood (1835–74), [1866], pp. 3–5, published by Cassell, Peter and Galpin, a firm founded by John Cassell (1817–65) in 1850.

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