SD1806. Robert Bulwer Lytton to John Forster
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 372 (in part).
Paris
Sunday [11 March 1855]
My dear Forster,
I am very much annoyed by what you tell me about Thackeray. His proceeding was quite unwarrantable. Thackeray asked me when he was last in Paris if I was not publishing a book. I replied that I had some Poems at the Press, but that if they were published it would be anonymously and that they would not appear with my name, and that therefore I did’nt wish the authorship to be generally known. I entered into no further details about the book. The subject came up incidentally in connection with other things in a conversation which took place between us privately at breakfast in his Hotel. I never promised him a copy of the book. I have not even promised one to Browning, or the Wilsons—my most intimate friends, who have been in the secret of it, since it was written. Indeed, I had no right to dispose of copies before hand without reference to you. Your kindness had undertaken the arrangements with the Publisher: I was not aware even whether I should be entitled to more than one copy of the work, and I meant to have applied for this thro’ you. I was not even aware whether Chapman & Hall were cognizant of the Authorship. Even had the promise been made, and had Thackeray been more in my confidence about the book nothing cd have warranted his entering Mr Chapman’s shop & making use of my name there unreservedly, and even supposing him to have understood me to have promised him a copy, the least delicacy would have had him either to wait till it was sent to him by me, or so apply to me personally for it. … If you could send me three copies of the Book, I should be glad to have one for my own use, and the two others I shd send to Italy to Browning & the Wilsons. …
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Lord Cobbold.
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