Correspondence

678.  RB to Edward Moxon

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 113.

[London]

Monday, 4. p.m. [?January 1839] [1]

My dear Moxon,

Here is Shelley—I wish there were time to go thro’ the book carefully. You will see at a glance which are the real corrections of errors, and which mere attempts to clear the text by tracing the construction,—as in the lines on the “Medusa”, “Song for Tasso” &c Don’t be in any haste to get done with the book which I am in no want of–

Ever yours

R Browning.

Publication: NL, pp. 14–15.

Manuscript: Huntington Library.

1. In the spring of 1839, Moxon published the Poetical Works of Shelley, edited by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. In view of RB’s known interest in Shelley, it is possible that Moxon consulted him during the pre-publication phase. This provides our conjectural dating. This hypothesis is strengthened by the fact that Moxon presented RB with an inscribed set of the Poetical Works, which formed lot 1081 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A2111). For details of RB’s association with Moxon, see pp. 328–330.

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