GE to John Blackwood, London, 20 March 1877
Title
GE to John Blackwood, London, 20 March 1877
Title
GE to John Blackwood, London, 20 March 1877
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
John Blackwood
Date(s)
- 1877-03-20
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to John Blackwood, London, 20 March 1877
MS: National Library of Scotland. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
March 20. 77.
My dear Mr. Blackwood
We both thank you for your letter of yesterday, enclosing the cheque for the advertisements in Deronda. I am sorry to find that you have been a fellow-sufferer in the matter of health. I am only just clambering out of a Slough of Despond where I have been feebly struggling for the last three weeks and more, since Mr. Lewes recovered from his sharp touch of rheumatic gout and left me time to think that I was ailing. We are likely still to be in town when you come, for we shall hardly be able to leave till the beginning of June, and for this Summer we shall only make a sort of bivouac in our Surrey house, only putting absolutely necessary things in it, so that we may test its conveniences and inconveniences and have all the needful alterations and the more troublesome cleansings set about after we leave it for the winter. We have made up our minds not to give up our London shell till we have made more complete experiments as to the conditions of life at Witley.
About a more expensive edition of my books, I one day mentioned a plan which Mr. Lewes wants me to tell you of. I was enjoying the fine octavo page of an edition of Fielding which we possess, when it occurred to me that I should like my own books to be published in eight volumes of like size with fine type and paper: the six long novels making each a volume, a seventh being made by the Scenes of Cl[erical] Life, Silas Marner, the Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob, and the eighth by the Spanish Gypsy and the Poems. I don't know how this would do financially. There is a difficulty in adjusting prices. Mr. Lewes thinks that each volume should not cost more than 7/6 (I had been thinking of 10/), and the Sp[anish] Gypsy is already 7/6, the volume of Poems 6/. There would be the advantage of a wider difference between the two editions, the one for purchasers with little money, the other for people who are amateurs of handsome volumes and can afford to pay for them. The suggestion is only an item to be added in the further discussion between you and other experts. I speak as that crudest of judges, an author.
We cannot enter into your objection to coupling the cheerful story with sadder aspects of human experience, the cheerfulness in the one mitigating the impression of sadness from the other which might be too strongly felt in separate publication.
I hope that you will come up in May -- that the sun will shine cheerily enough to tempt you away from Edinburgh and keep you here till we have flitted, so that we may see you both in town and country.
We have been reading Miss Martineau's autobiography, 622 which is pathetic and interesting throughout the childhood and early youth. But afterwards when she has to tell about her writings and what others said and did concerning them, the impression on me was one of shuddering vexation with myself that I had ever said a word to anybody about either compliments or injuries in relation to my own doings. But assuredly I shall not write such things down to be published after my death.
Always yours truly
M. E. Lewes.
MS: National Library of Scotland. Hitherto unpublished.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
March 20. 77.
My dear Mr. Blackwood
We both thank you for your letter of yesterday, enclosing the cheque for the advertisements in Deronda. I am sorry to find that you have been a fellow-sufferer in the matter of health. I am only just clambering out of a Slough of Despond where I have been feebly struggling for the last three weeks and more, since Mr. Lewes recovered from his sharp touch of rheumatic gout and left me time to think that I was ailing. We are likely still to be in town when you come, for we shall hardly be able to leave till the beginning of June, and for this Summer we shall only make a sort of bivouac in our Surrey house, only putting absolutely necessary things in it, so that we may test its conveniences and inconveniences and have all the needful alterations and the more troublesome cleansings set about after we leave it for the winter. We have made up our minds not to give up our London shell till we have made more complete experiments as to the conditions of life at Witley.
About a more expensive edition of my books, I one day mentioned a plan which Mr. Lewes wants me to tell you of. I was enjoying the fine octavo page of an edition of Fielding which we possess, when it occurred to me that I should like my own books to be published in eight volumes of like size with fine type and paper: the six long novels making each a volume, a seventh being made by the Scenes of Cl[erical] Life, Silas Marner, the Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob, and the eighth by the Spanish Gypsy and the Poems. I don't know how this would do financially. There is a difficulty in adjusting prices. Mr. Lewes thinks that each volume should not cost more than 7/6 (I had been thinking of 10/), and the Sp[anish] Gypsy is already 7/6, the volume of Poems 6/. There would be the advantage of a wider difference between the two editions, the one for purchasers with little money, the other for people who are amateurs of handsome volumes and can afford to pay for them. The suggestion is only an item to be added in the further discussion between you and other experts. I speak as that crudest of judges, an author.
We cannot enter into your objection to coupling the cheerful story with sadder aspects of human experience, the cheerfulness in the one mitigating the impression of sadness from the other which might be too strongly felt in separate publication.
I hope that you will come up in May -- that the sun will shine cheerily enough to tempt you away from Edinburgh and keep you here till we have flitted, so that we may see you both in town and country.
We have been reading Miss Martineau's autobiography, 622 which is pathetic and interesting throughout the childhood and early youth. But afterwards when she has to tell about her writings and what others said and did concerning them, the impression on me was one of shuddering vexation with myself that I had ever said a word to anybody about either compliments or injuries in relation to my own doings. But assuredly I shall not write such things down to be published after my death.
Always yours truly
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to John Blackwood, London, 20 March 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/92635