Autograph letter signed : [London], to George Goodin Moulton-Barrett, 1843 December 21.

Chiding George for believing and repeating that idea that the dedication in Harriet Martineau's recently published book "Life in a Sick Room: Essays by an Invalid", which made reference to a "fellow sufferer", was to EBB; telling him she too at first suspected it might have been dedicated to her and that many other people, including Edward Moxon and Martineau's close friend Elizabeth Jesser Reid, believe that she is the dedicatee, but that she has determined that that isn't the case, based on the content of the dedication: "[A] passage in the body of the book, where specific views in politics are attributed to the 'fellow-sufferer,' which are neither mine nor cd. be imagined into being mine,--quite fixed me in the conviction of my former mistake & of the book being by no means dedicated to me"; telling him that John Kenyon agrees with her; writing about the progress she has made on her own work, specifically the poem "A Drama of Exile", and her plans for negotiating the publication rights with Moxon; asking after Tennyson: "Tell me if you see Tennyson by a bird's eye view--& that an owl's. And know, my learned brother, that albeit I did unaware mention Tennyson next to a poem of mine, I put my head into the dust on recognition of that associative accident"; sending news about the legal and financial problems of their relative Samuel Goodin-Barrett; mentioning that George Hunter is moving to London with one pupil and will be looking "to secure other pupils upon like terms. The prospect is gloomy--but the only thing to be seen; &, if one's window looked into a back yard, that wdnt. be a good reason for shutting the shutters."