BIB_ID
402406
Accession number
MA 2148.12
Creator
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 1806-1861.
Display Date
1841 July 20.
Credit line
Acquired from the University of Illinois, 1961.
Description
1 item (6 pages) ; 18.8 x 11.4 cm + envelope
Notes
Place of writing determined from postmarks and internal evidence. See the published editions of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information. Landis also suggests that EBB may have misdated the letter, and that it might have been written in June rather than July.
Mourning envelope with stamp and postmarks addressed to: "G.G. Barrett Esqr/ On the Circuit/ Stafford."
With a seal containing the word "Ba" (EBB's nickname).
The first page of the letter has two pen strokes running diagonally through it. The date is also written a second time, midway through the letter, in an unknown hand.
Mourning envelope with stamp and postmarks addressed to: "G.G. Barrett Esqr/ On the Circuit/ Stafford."
With a seal containing the word "Ba" (EBB's nickname).
The first page of the letter has two pen strokes running diagonally through it. The date is also written a second time, midway through the letter, in an unknown hand.
Provenance
Acquired from the University of Illinois, 1961.
Summary
Discussing her departure from Torquay and whether it would still go forward, since there have been delays; telling him that she would be willing to move to anywhere near London, and that her friend Mary Russell Mitford, who lives in Reading, is hoping that she ends up there; mentioning that Arabella organized a "rural entertainment" for the local schoolchildren yesterday, which Henrietta strongly disapproved of: "Tea & cake & a run in the grass--were the head & front of the offending... I was vexed a little I confess--but say nothing of this. A person may be as High Church as one steeple upon another, & yet care for the innocent enjoyment of poor children"; commenting on the controversy over Catherine Maria Sedgwick's book Letters from Abroad; telling him that John Kenyon had found proof sheets of the book at the printer's (EBB's printer, Edward Moxon), read what Miss Sedgwick had written about him, and censored it on the spot, claiming that he had a moral right to do so; asking George's opinion of this action and mulling over the implications of it: "Think of the consequence, if everyone who pleased, walked into a publisher's shop, and cut down every writer's proof sheets to the measure of his own opinions!"
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