GE to Alexander Main, London, 4 December 1877
Title
GE to Alexander Main, London, 4 December 1877
Title
GE to Alexander Main, London, 4 December 1877
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Alexander Main
Date(s)
- 1877-12-04
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Alexander Main, London, 4 December 1877
MS: Morgan Library. Envelope: Alexander Main, Esq | 71 Millgate Loan | Arbroath | N.B. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
December 4. 77.
Dear Mr. Main
I have but just learned from Messrs. Blackwood that they have agreed with you concerning the Birthday Book. When your letter came I had already referred the decision to Mr. Blackwood, Mr. Lewes and I having no acquaintance with this new mode of serving up authors. Since then Mr. Blackwood has sent me the Tennyson specimen, and I must say that I think it exceedingly ill done. The extracts are too numerous and too short. The effect is dolting and feeble. This is not the Poet's fault, and I think the presentation of our beloved Tennyson in this book is cruelly inadequate.
It is probably too late now to mention Mr. Lewes's wish that there should be a good sprinkling of the best quotations from my Poems and Poetical mottoes. But I confide in your having done something very different from the work of Tennyson's editor. I should like you to remember for a spring month the motto in Deronda beginning [Fairy folks a-listening,] and for a winter month the motto in Middlemarch beginning [Surely the golden hours are turning grey.] 790
And will you permit me to say that the only peccant tendency I can accuse you of as a selector is a not always strict obedience to that precious rule [Nothing too much]? Perhaps it would have been better not to have made the volume of [Sayings] quite so bulky. Not that this is any business of mine.
I hope that your enjoyment of family life and studious work is as untroubled as the conditions of our frail mortality will allow to a susceptible loving mind that lives in and for fellow beings as well as in and for ideas.
We are very well and very happy and be assured that you are remembered with all the more pleasure for being in the number of those who do not require to be written to. Mr. Lewes sends his kindest regards and I am always
Yours in sincere friendship
M. E. Lewes.
MS: Morgan Library. Envelope: Alexander Main, Esq | 71 Millgate Loan | Arbroath | N.B. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
December 4. 77.
Dear Mr. Main
I have but just learned from Messrs. Blackwood that they have agreed with you concerning the Birthday Book. When your letter came I had already referred the decision to Mr. Blackwood, Mr. Lewes and I having no acquaintance with this new mode of serving up authors. Since then Mr. Blackwood has sent me the Tennyson specimen, and I must say that I think it exceedingly ill done. The extracts are too numerous and too short. The effect is dolting and feeble. This is not the Poet's fault, and I think the presentation of our beloved Tennyson in this book is cruelly inadequate.
It is probably too late now to mention Mr. Lewes's wish that there should be a good sprinkling of the best quotations from my Poems and Poetical mottoes. But I confide in your having done something very different from the work of Tennyson's editor. I should like you to remember for a spring month the motto in Deronda beginning [Fairy folks a-listening,] and for a winter month the motto in Middlemarch beginning [Surely the golden hours are turning grey.] 790
And will you permit me to say that the only peccant tendency I can accuse you of as a selector is a not always strict obedience to that precious rule [Nothing too much]? Perhaps it would have been better not to have made the volume of [Sayings] quite so bulky. Not that this is any business of mine.
I hope that your enjoyment of family life and studious work is as untroubled as the conditions of our frail mortality will allow to a susceptible loving mind that lives in and for fellow beings as well as in and for ideas.
We are very well and very happy and be assured that you are remembered with all the more pleasure for being in the number of those who do not require to be written to. Mr. Lewes sends his kindest regards and I am always
Yours in sincere friendship
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Alexander Main, London, 4 December 1877, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/91997