Author: Frederick Locker-Lampson

Publisher:

Published: 1882

Total Pages: 4

ISBN-13:

"I have been waiting, & waiting in vain, for the proof sheets of your Longfellow. . . . I at once wrote to Mr. Dobson, & in his letter, now before me, he says 'I have this day seen Messrs. Cassell & Co., & they say, "the fact of your writing a preface would not affect the question of Copyright. . . ."' Now I must tell you that I have not the pen of a ready writer, & prefaces are not a bit in my way, & I should not know what to say about your Great Poet, which has not been already said many times -- & better! . . . . &, further, your 'good wine needs no bush' of mine. Mr. Dobson says, for himself, that he would be vy glad indeed to oblige you, but that he is overwhelmed with his Life of Fielding . . . but that if you like to use his Athenaeum poem on Longfellow, in any way, it is quite at your service. Dear Sir, I wish I could do as you so flatteringly propose, but if you knew me better you wd. never have asked me for this preface. I daresay Mr. Dobson laughed when I wrote to him about it. No; we must spare the shade of Longfellow this ignominy." Within a short time of Longfellow's death on March 24, 1882, numerous collections of his works were printed in both the U.S. and England (see BAL). Frederick Warne and Co. published Henry W. Longfellow. A memoir by Richard Henry Stoddard, in London, apparently within weeks of the poet's death, and another book, Stoddard's Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. A medley in prose and verse, appeared in New York (George Harlan & Co.) in the same year.