Amy Lowell letter to Belle da Costa Greene, 23 November 1921

Lowell was the first scholar to study the “Woodhouse Book,” the bound compilation of letters, documents, and transcribed poetry assembled by the collector, lawyer, and Keats contemporary Richard Woodhouse. Lowell’s book on Keats explores various objects within the volume, including the library catalogue drawn up by Charles Armitage Brown along with unpublished letters between Woodhouse and Keats’s publisher John Taylor. In an age when the photographic reproduction of special collections material was hardly widespread, Lowell’s research necessitated several trips to New York to consult the manuscript. At one point she even sent Greene a “'cheeky' request” to consult the volume overnight in her hotel room while recovering from surgery. Greene agreed to the unconventional arrangement, humoring a friend and trusted colleague whom she clearly admired: in a letter from June 1921, Greene wrote, “What we ‘think of you’ is entirely too complimentary for transmission by mere paper."