Supporting Documents

SD1970.  Coventry Patmore to Ralph Waldo Emerson

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 252 (in part).

British Museum.

September 30, 1856

My dear Mr Emerson,

I take the opportunity offered by Mrs Ward’s return to America to convey to you my sincere thanks …

I have never been more surprised than by hearing of the success of my book in America. In England it has created little or no reputation, except among a few of the best readers. Tennyson, Carlyle, Ruskin, Browning, and a few others of that order speak of the poem in a way which leaves little doubt in my mind of it’s making an impression here after a course of years. …

Text: The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Ralph L. Rusk (New York, 1939), 5, 20–21.

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