Letter from Edward Bulwer Lytton, London, to Catherine Grace Frances Gore, 1832 June 3 : autograph manuscript signed.

Responding to a letter in which she complains of the treatment of her work in the New Review; explaining that a poem she submitted was not published in the most recent number of the New Review owing to his inability to omit an article to make space for it as he had intended, and promising to include it in the next number; stating, in answer to her objections regarding a review of her work (i.e. The fair of Mayfair) which have appeared in the magazine, that "You seem to think that private acquaintanceship - that private feelings - are to interfere with or rather to actuate - public criticism. I wholly disown that doctrine", adding that were his own brother to write a book "beneath his talents", he would review it "as slightingly or as severely" as that of a stranger, and informing her that he has directed (as editor of the New Review) that reviews in the magazine should be "wholly uninfluenced by the name of the Bookseller in the first place - or the name of the Author in the second"; noting that the commentary she especially objected to had come from a man who was "a very warm admirer" of her writings, and confessing that he has "seen with pain what I considered a misapplication of your great talents in fashionable novels", but denying that the critism was inspired by any want of appreciation for her writing, and pointing out that he has collected some of her earlier works with the intention of writing some appreciative reviews of them; responding to her objections against the criticism of a novel by Mr. (Thomas Henry) Lister, denying that it was motivated by any personal prejudice, and stating, in response to claims in her letter to him, that she was "not permitted" to defend Lister in print, that "I have no connection whatever with any one on critical matters except my co-editor Mr. Hall" and observing that a review of Lister's book has just appeared in the New Monthly Magazine "much more favourable than I wd. ever have allowed - had not the miraculous dullness of his last driveling publication caused it to fall stillborn from the press"; asking her, in conclusion, to assist him in rescuing criticism from "system of personal quarrels & private friendships into which it has so often fallen", and repeating his assurance that no private prejudice would be allowed to color his opinions of a book by her or Mr. Lister, "the first whom I admire - the second whom I would laugh at only one can't laugh & yawn at the same time."