BIB_ID
128711
Accession number
MA 8867
Creator
Ballantyne, James, 1772-1833.
Display Date
1825 July 5.
Description
1 item (2 pages, with address) ; 22.5 x 18.5 cm
Notes
Address panel with postmark and seal to "William Jerdan Esq / Literary Gazette Office / 362, Strand, / London."
Docketed "1825 Js Ballantyne / my mistake about / The Betrothed. I think / Scott never quite / forgave it."
William Jerdan was a Scottish journalist and editor of The Literary Gazette from 1817 until 1850.
A penciled notation indicates this letter was removed from an extra-illustrated volume of Louis Adolphe Thiers, "History of the French Revolution."
Docketed "1825 Js Ballantyne / my mistake about / The Betrothed. I think / Scott never quite / forgave it."
William Jerdan was a Scottish journalist and editor of The Literary Gazette from 1817 until 1850.
A penciled notation indicates this letter was removed from an extra-illustrated volume of Louis Adolphe Thiers, "History of the French Revolution."
Summary
Responding harshly to his suggestion, in his review of Sir Walter Scott's "The Betrothed, that Scott had merely corrected it but had not written it; saying "I assure you of this, upon my sacred word. The Author of Waverley wrote every sentence - every word - of The Betrothed, as well as of The Talisman; nor did he ever give to the public one line which was not written by himself. This no one can know so well as myself, through whose hands every page of his Ms. has past, since he began to write these works...I would not have cared one penny had anybody else fall into, & published, this utter error; but from many causes, and explicitly from the uniform sense and caution which characterize your work, it does vex me as having come from you."
Catalog link
Department