Autograph letter signed : Cambridge, to Siegfried Sassoon, 1932 May 27.

Recounting the sale of a copy of Sassoon's Sonnets and Verses (Cockerell calls it "Sonnets and Poems") that had previously been owned by the Doughty family (see MA 4705.4 for background); telling him that he brought the book to the bookseller Elkin Mathews: "[Percy] Muir happened to be out so I left it after explaining to one of the partners that the price was £25. Today I have received a cheque for that amount, which goes by this post to Mrs. Doughty -- She will be very grateful to you, I know"; explaining the history of his connection with the book, which contained an epigraph from Charles Doughty's Travels in Arabia Deserta: "it was through my introducing Arabia Deserta to Edward Garnett that the abridged edition came out in 1908 -- and I expect that it was in this 2 vol. abridgement of Duckworth's that you, like so many others, made Doughty's acquaintance -- & were so led to quote him and to send him the book that has now brought such welcome assistance to his widow"; commenting on the collection: "I read it in the train and found it very interesting -- On the whole I thought the Poems better than the Sonnets"; telling Sassoon that he went to the library of St. John's College and the University Library to see what they had of his early editions; adding "From Bowes and Bowes I learnt that they bought in 1929 from [Mollison's] estate his important little collection, including Poems of 1906. They disposed of them all very soon, probably to Elkin Mathews"; writing that he "should like to see and handle a complete series of these things -- but as to possessing them, although I am proud to have those that you gave me in 1916, I count them as nothing in comparison with the manuscript poems I have of yours -- which I prize exceedingly and for which I am afraid that I made you no return"; offering Sassoon a fair copy of the poem "The Farmer's Bride" by Charlotte Mew, in her autograph: "I paid her to write it out for me soon after I made her acquaintance -- Later on she gave me the original manuscript, an untidier production but far more thrilling"; discussing the reconsecration of the church in the hamlet of Winterborne Tomson: "I read about the reconsecration of that Dorset church, but I don't think I received an invitation to the ceremony. [A. R.] Powys came to Max Gate when I was there not very long after T[homas] H[ardy]'s death to discuss the project."