GHL to Alexander Main, Redhill, 25 June 1872
Title
GHL to Alexander Main, Redhill, 25 June 1872
Title
GHL to Alexander Main, Redhill, 25 June 1872
Sender
George Henry Lewes
Recipient
Alexander Main
Date(s)
- 1872-06-25
Place
Redhill
Letter Content
GHL to Alexander Main, Redhill, 25 June 1872
Text: Main's copy owned by Mr. John R. Sprunt. Hitherto unpublished.
Elversley, Park Road | Red Hill, | 25 June 1872.
My dear Main
The passage relating to yourself in the enclosed letter is so delightful and will assuredly delight you that I send the whole letter on; you will like to read it all. Send it me back.
At the close of your last there was a passing mention of your having studied Mathematics which suggested to me that perhaps you might like to undertake a work which I schemed some weeks ago intending to find some ingenious and idle person to execute it. The notion is this: De Morgan 546 contributed all the mathematical articles to the Penny Cyclopaedia and very valuable they are; now if these were extracted as they are, with the intercalation of biographies of the great mathematicians and mathematical physicists also from the Cyclopaedia and also mostly written by De Morgan the whole might make a compact Mathematical Dictionary of great utility, Hutton's being now out of date.
The work would only be selection and intercalation -- unless you chose to add anything of your own -- and I daresay Bradbury and Evans would pay well for such labor if I spoke to them about it. Shall I speak to them on your behalf? Would you like to employ your leisure in such hack work? Be perfectly frank about it, for my desire in the matter is simply to benefit the public by presenting material in an accessible form, and benefit any writer who would happen to like such employment.
Mrs. Lewes is visibly improving in health and writing, writing, writing -- ye gods! How she is writing! But you must not ask her for letters just now -- her correspondence falls on me -- and her friends must be content with reliance on her thinking of them.
I think Blackwood will be much pleased to hear of the "Sayings" becoming a breviary. I shall tell him of it when he returns, which must now be shortly.
Ever yours truly
G. H. Lewes.
Text: Main's copy owned by Mr. John R. Sprunt. Hitherto unpublished.
Elversley, Park Road | Red Hill, | 25 June 1872.
My dear Main
The passage relating to yourself in the enclosed letter is so delightful and will assuredly delight you that I send the whole letter on; you will like to read it all. Send it me back.
At the close of your last there was a passing mention of your having studied Mathematics which suggested to me that perhaps you might like to undertake a work which I schemed some weeks ago intending to find some ingenious and idle person to execute it. The notion is this: De Morgan 546 contributed all the mathematical articles to the Penny Cyclopaedia and very valuable they are; now if these were extracted as they are, with the intercalation of biographies of the great mathematicians and mathematical physicists also from the Cyclopaedia and also mostly written by De Morgan the whole might make a compact Mathematical Dictionary of great utility, Hutton's being now out of date.
The work would only be selection and intercalation -- unless you chose to add anything of your own -- and I daresay Bradbury and Evans would pay well for such labor if I spoke to them about it. Shall I speak to them on your behalf? Would you like to employ your leisure in such hack work? Be perfectly frank about it, for my desire in the matter is simply to benefit the public by presenting material in an accessible form, and benefit any writer who would happen to like such employment.
Mrs. Lewes is visibly improving in health and writing, writing, writing -- ye gods! How she is writing! But you must not ask her for letters just now -- her correspondence falls on me -- and her friends must be content with reliance on her thinking of them.
I think Blackwood will be much pleased to hear of the "Sayings" becoming a breviary. I shall tell him of it when he returns, which must now be shortly.
Ever yours truly
G. H. Lewes.
Signature
G. H. Lewes.
Citation
George Henry Lewes, GHL to Alexander Main, Redhill, 25 June 1872, 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/94427