William Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 5 May 1859
Title
William Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 5 May 1859
Title
William Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 5 May 1859
Sender
William Blackwood
Recipient
George Eliot
Date(s)
- 1859-05-05
Place
Edinburgh
Letter Content
William Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 5 May 1859
MS: National Library of Scotland. Hitherto unpublished.
Edinburgh 5 May 1859.
My dear Sir
I enclose two letters for you. That from Mr. Anders had in some unaccountable way fallen aside and was laid on my desk two days ago only by a clerk. I opened it stupidly without looking at the address for which I beg to apologise. His account of the way in which his letter got into the Times is not very credible. You will be glad to hear that the sale of Adam still goes on to admiration. We published another edition, the 3d, of 500 129 copies on Monday and have disposed of almost 400. This makes a total sale of over 3000, a result which should assure even your self distrusting spirit of the value of your work. It is not however the mere extent of the circulation of Adam Bede which you may regard with pleasure. Widely as the work has been read the appreciation which it has received from those best qualified to judge of its merit must be still more gratifying to its author. You have had ample proof of this in the letters which we have had the pleasure of forwarding to you, and I can add, with much satisfaction, the assurance that we have equally favourable opinions from all who read the book.
I have tried to recover the numbers of the "Leader" and "Critic" which contained the remarks about the secret of authorship, but unsuccessfully. They were foolish and impertinent; attempting to prove that the public had a right to know who was the author of any book and therefore that such as Mr. Anders were justified in stating their beliefs. The articles were contemptible and any notice of such things would only gratify the creatures who had written them. My brother has read with great admiration the M.S. you sent a few days ago and will write himself shortly.
Yours sincerely
W. Blackwood.
George Eliot Esq.
MS: National Library of Scotland. Hitherto unpublished.
Edinburgh 5 May 1859.
My dear Sir
I enclose two letters for you. That from Mr. Anders had in some unaccountable way fallen aside and was laid on my desk two days ago only by a clerk. I opened it stupidly without looking at the address for which I beg to apologise. His account of the way in which his letter got into the Times is not very credible. You will be glad to hear that the sale of Adam still goes on to admiration. We published another edition, the 3d, of 500 129 copies on Monday and have disposed of almost 400. This makes a total sale of over 3000, a result which should assure even your self distrusting spirit of the value of your work. It is not however the mere extent of the circulation of Adam Bede which you may regard with pleasure. Widely as the work has been read the appreciation which it has received from those best qualified to judge of its merit must be still more gratifying to its author. You have had ample proof of this in the letters which we have had the pleasure of forwarding to you, and I can add, with much satisfaction, the assurance that we have equally favourable opinions from all who read the book.
I have tried to recover the numbers of the "Leader" and "Critic" which contained the remarks about the secret of authorship, but unsuccessfully. They were foolish and impertinent; attempting to prove that the public had a right to know who was the author of any book and therefore that such as Mr. Anders were justified in stating their beliefs. The articles were contemptible and any notice of such things would only gratify the creatures who had written them. My brother has read with great admiration the M.S. you sent a few days ago and will write himself shortly.
Yours sincerely
W. Blackwood.
George Eliot Esq.
Signature
W. Blackwood.
Citation
William Blackwood, William Blackwood to GE, Edinburgh, 5 May 1859, 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/95654