5864. RB to Edmund Sydney Williams
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 165–166.
19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.
Feb: 16. ’67.
Sir, [1]
With respect to the proposal of Baron Tauchnitz [2] to include some of my poems in his collection, I beg to say that I am very sensible of the compliment he pays me, and have no objection to comply with his request. But I should be most unwilling that the Selection published by Moxon [3] should seem to represent my general performances, for a reason which I mentioned in the advertisement thereto,—that it only followed a much more characteristic Selection already made for my own publishers, Chapman & Hall, by two friends of mine, [4] —so that I could only glean from a field which they had first reaped,—throwing in, however, a few pieces which had been printed in the interval. Of course I can make one Collection out of the two: but my own suggestion would be that the whole of my minor Poems should go together in two volumes—which would do me justice, be more worthy in every way, and remain a complete thing in your Series, without prejudice to the addition of the other Poems at some future day. If this arrangement suits the Baron, I will prepare the pieces carefully: and the terms I shall leave to his own liberality. [5]
I rather wonder that the application is not, in the first instance, for that Selection—or a part of it—which I published a year ago, of the Poems of Elizabeth Barrett B. [6]
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant
Robert Browning.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: University of California at Berkeley.
1. Edmund Sydney Williams (1817–91), partner in Williams and Norgate, publishers and book importers, with offices at 14 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. The firm acted as agents for Baron Tauchnitz.
2. Christian Bernhard Tauchnitz (1816–95); see letter 4259, note 1.
3. A Selection from the Works of Robert Browning (1865); see letter 5532, note 2.
4. Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert Browning (1863), silently edited by John Forster and Bryan Waller Procter.
5. As it happened, the terms Tauchnitz offered RB, through Williams, were insufficiently liberal. In a letter of the following month, Sarianna tells Joseph Milsand that the price offered by Tauchnitz “was so absurdly small that Rt. refused” (see SD2881). Early in 1868, Tauchnitz’s son called on RB that he might reconsider, but again he declined. He explained to Isa Blagden: “I have no ambition to give cheap shillings’ worths to the travelling English” (see letter 6008). RB eventually came to an agreement with Tauchnitz in late 1871, and the latter issued The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (4 vols., Leipzig, 1872), Aurora Leigh (Leipzig, 1872), and A Selection from the Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Leipzig, 1872).
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