5948. RB to Messrs. Ticknor & Fields
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 237–238.
London, 19. Warwick Crescent,
Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.
July 19. ’67.
Gentlemen,
I beg to thank you for the two letters which contained your handsome acceptance of my proposal, [1] and directions as to the way of forwarding the sheets. I shall do my best to satisfy you, depend upon it, and will manage all about the packets, duplicates &c scrupulously. But the people, with a right to advise me in this matter,—in which they will be quite as interested as yourselves, demur to my sending anything seven weeks before publication,—they insist on my avoiding all possibility of even extracts getting here before their own proceedings. Especially they want to announce the name of the poem themselves. I must beg for your indulgence and sympathy in these matters, and that you will believe my honest determination is to make you as secure as you would wish. Meantime I give you what particulars I can, for your guidance. The Poem is new in subject, treatment and form. It is in Twelve Parts, averaging, say, 1600 lines each—the whole somewhat exceeding 20,000. (It is the shortest poem, for the stuff in it, I ever wrote). This will be printed here in two volumes of six parts each. The name is that of the collection of law-papers on which,—or out of which, rather, the poem is developed. I hope to be able to begin to print in October. I go in a week to a quiet place for two months, where I shall finally dispose of at least three quarters of this thing. Should you want to communicate with me, write to me “Au Croisic, Loire Inférieure, France”—where I am to be found from August to the end of September.
I hope I do not dissatisfy you in any respect, and, repeating my own satisfaction at your kindness, am, gentlemen,
Very faithfully yours
Robert Browning.
Messrs Ticknor & Fields,
Boston. U.S.
Address, on integral page: Messrs Ticknor & Fields, / Boston. / U.S.A.
Publication: LRB, pp. 113–114.
Manuscript: Massachusetts Historical Society.
1. Two hundred pounds for the American rights to The Ring and the Book, which the firm accepted in letter 5904.
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