John Blackwood to GHL, St. Andrews, 7 June 1873
Title
John Blackwood to GHL, St. Andrews, 7 June 1873
Title
John Blackwood to GHL, St. Andrews, 7 June 1873
Sender
John Blackwood
Recipient
George Henry Lewes
Date(s)
- 1873-06-07
Place
St. Andrews
Letter Content
John Blackwood to GHL, St. Andrews, 7 June 1873
Text: Copy in Blackwood Letter Book. Hitherto unpublished.
Strathtyrum | St. Andrews June 7/73.
My Dear Lewes
From your note I think you are under a misapprehension as to the profit upon the 21/ edition of Middlemarch, so I wrote in to Edinboro' for the particulars which I now enclose. Our original estimate you will see was for 1000 copies and I do not think the publisher's profit is under the circumstances at all unreasonable. If the experiment had not succeeded we should have been losers as it is only by the sale of the last hundred or two of the edition that the publisher's profit comes in. We have now as I understand printed up to two thousand copies and if we sell the whole our profit will be something over £200. Our risk goes on each time we reprint. I hope this explanation will be satisfactory to you and show that in making our estimate and offer in January we had carefully considered what could be afforded to the Author.
I was very sorry indeed not to see you both again before I left but I was wearying to get home which I did the day after I was to have been with you. Since then there has been a good deal of golf. Yesterday there was a grand match between the two best players in the world. The world is in this case fairly represented by St. Andrews. The match lasted four hours and talk of hanging on the lips of an orator that was nothing to the way the excited crowd hung upon every stroke these two lads played. The play was splendid and my man the young champion Tom Morris came in winner by a neck. The match will live in history and I shall be mentioned in golfing story as having made the match and backed Tommy when most folk thought he was off his game!
Mrs. Lewes showed a golfing spirit and will appreciate the position. The champion father was walking with me all the time in a tremendous state of excitement and exclaimed at the finish "Oddsake Mr. Blackwood I maun hae a drink immaideately ma throat's as dry as a whistle." He did have it.
Ever yours truly signed John Blackwood.
Text: Copy in Blackwood Letter Book. Hitherto unpublished.
Strathtyrum | St. Andrews June 7/73.
My Dear Lewes
From your note I think you are under a misapprehension as to the profit upon the 21/ edition of Middlemarch, so I wrote in to Edinboro' for the particulars which I now enclose. Our original estimate you will see was for 1000 copies and I do not think the publisher's profit is under the circumstances at all unreasonable. If the experiment had not succeeded we should have been losers as it is only by the sale of the last hundred or two of the edition that the publisher's profit comes in. We have now as I understand printed up to two thousand copies and if we sell the whole our profit will be something over £200. Our risk goes on each time we reprint. I hope this explanation will be satisfactory to you and show that in making our estimate and offer in January we had carefully considered what could be afforded to the Author.
I was very sorry indeed not to see you both again before I left but I was wearying to get home which I did the day after I was to have been with you. Since then there has been a good deal of golf. Yesterday there was a grand match between the two best players in the world. The world is in this case fairly represented by St. Andrews. The match lasted four hours and talk of hanging on the lips of an orator that was nothing to the way the excited crowd hung upon every stroke these two lads played. The play was splendid and my man the young champion Tom Morris came in winner by a neck. The match will live in history and I shall be mentioned in golfing story as having made the match and backed Tommy when most folk thought he was off his game!
Mrs. Lewes showed a golfing spirit and will appreciate the position. The champion father was walking with me all the time in a tremendous state of excitement and exclaimed at the finish "Oddsake Mr. Blackwood I maun hae a drink immaideately ma throat's as dry as a whistle." He did have it.
Ever yours truly signed John Blackwood.
Signature
[signed] John Blackwood.
Citation
John Blackwood, John Blackwood to GHL, St. Andrews, 7 June 1873, 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/95446