SD1452. Charles Stephen Francis to The Editors of The Literary World
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 303–304.
New York
Sept. 16, 1850
To the Editors of the Literary World.
Gents: The comments upon our edition of Mrs. Browning’s Poems, contained in your paper of last week, are so unjust, and if unnoticed or uncontradicted, so calculated to injure our reputation, and to give your readers a very false impression of the book itself, that we must claim of you, as impartial journalists, the right to say a few words in reply, and we will occupy for that purpose as little room as possible.
First: To deal with the sin of omission of which we are accused by your reviewer—for in this appears to consist our heaviest offence—it is true that two Notes have been omitted from our edition, which we now request you to publish, that we may, by their circulation in your columns, in some measure atone for our offence, and at the same time enable your readers to judge of its heinousness, and in how great a degree the omission of these notes detracts from the value of our book.
Note 1, page 1, of Preface to our second volume. “*My thanks are especially due to Mr. Mathews, the eloquent Secretary of the American Copyright Club; a gentleman whose success in the construction of fossil romances (see his gigantic Behemoth) does not interfere with the freshness of his cordialities.”
Note on page —, vol. —, Poems on Man, by Cornelius Mathews.*
“*A small volume, by an American Poet, as remarkable, in thought and manner, for a vital, sinewy vigor, as the right arm of Pathfinder.”
And now, what have we done in the way of “commission?” We are accused of having included in our edition a whole volume of Poems by Miss Barrett, “The Seraphim, etc.,” never before published in this country, and therefore not to be found in the former New York edition. We plead guilty to this; for we proposed to furnish the American admirers of this lady with as complete a collection of her original poetry as we could gather, and they are reprinted verbatim from the London copy, without “omission or commission.” The reason why these poems were not included in Moxon’s edition, from which Langley’s edition was reprinted, probably was, that the copyright of them was held by another London house; and not, as might be inferred from the words of your reviewer, because they are not poems “by which she wishes to have her fame adjudged”—an inference, we believe, which the author would by no means relish. Of course, as these were the earlier poems, we placed them in our first volume, with the Preface belonging [to] them. It is not true that we paid no regard to the author’s arrangement of her Prefaces, for we were careful not to separate them from the poems to which they were originally attached. Our second volume contains the Drama of Exile, and other Poems, as published in London by Mr. Moxon, and in this city by Messrs. Langley, with the author’s Dedication and Preface, the latter relating almost entirely to the principal poem. We have not removed them from their proper position; and they occupy, in our edition, the only place they could occupy with propriety. The only change we have made in the arrangement of the Poems, has been to place some of the minor poems, from the former edition, at the end of our first volume, in order to make our volumes of uniform size.
Will your reviewer explain the “palpable deception” and “stigma” of this? and tell us in what way “the distinguished lady is mispresented and misrepresented?”
Very respectfully yours,
Chas. S. Francis & Co.
Text: The Literary World (New York), 28 September 1850, p. 254.
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