BIB_ID
137345
Accession number
MA 790.2
Creator
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822.
Display Date
1821 Nov. 29.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1911.
Description
1 item (3 p., with address) ; 24.6 cm
Notes
Address panel with evidence of a seal and addressed simply to "Joseph Severn Esqr."
From a postscript to a letter from Severn to Wilkinson, 1842 Dec. 23 (original in Adelman Collection, Bryn Mawr College Library): "After long search we have at last found the treasure in a large book. I knew I had this letter of Shelleys & so was determined to search it out for you. -- pray accept it for the present, with my desire to procure you many others that I have in view. --" (transcription courtesy of Grant Scott, 2004).
Part of a collection of three letters concerning Shelley's Adonais; see related collection-level record for more information.
From a postscript to a letter from Severn to Wilkinson, 1842 Dec. 23 (original in Adelman Collection, Bryn Mawr College Library): "After long search we have at last found the treasure in a large book. I knew I had this letter of Shelleys & so was determined to search it out for you. -- pray accept it for the present, with my desire to procure you many others that I have in view. --" (transcription courtesy of Grant Scott, 2004).
Part of a collection of three letters concerning Shelley's Adonais; see related collection-level record for more information.
Provenance
Presented by Severn to the Rev. Thomas Wilkinson in 1842; his sale (1 May 1872, p. 21, no. 151), £8 to Labussière; "A Gentleman's" sale at Sotheby's (12 February 1874, p. 12, no. 80), £7 to Ellis for Henry Huth (Cat. 1880, V, p. 1704), A. H. Huth's sale (12 June 1911, p. 36, no. 204 and pl. 1), £700 to Quaritch; purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1911.
Summary
Sending a copy of Adonais: "I send you the Elegy on poor Keats--and wish it was better worth your reception. You will see by the preface that it was written before I could obtain any particular account of his last moments;... In spite of his transcendent genius Keats never was not nor ever will be a popular poet and the total neglect & obscurity in which the astonishing remnants of his mind still lie, was hardly to be dissipated by a writer, who, however he may differ from Keats in many important qualities, at least resembles him in that accidental one, a want of popularity...For my part, I little expected when I last saw Keats at my friend Leigh Hunt's, that I should survive him." Thanking him for a promised portrait of Keats and hoping to cultivate his acquaintance should he ever pass through Pisa.
Catalog link
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