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Some New Burns Letters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Now that five years have elapsed since The Letters of Robert Burns went to press, a postscript may be in order. Though no great mass of new material has come to light, eight hitherto inedited letters have been discovered, fifteen originals of letters already in print have been located, and new secondary material has corrected the dates or addresses of a few letters which I printed from the holographs. Part of the new material has already appeared in the Burns Chronicle. Summarizing this briefly, I shall add my new matter, which includes three inedited letters and one hitherto published only in garbled and fragmentary form. Some comments and speculations regarding manuscripts still untraced may also be allowable.
Information
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936
References
1 Oxford, 1931.
2 Burns Chronicle (1935), pp. 7–8.—The MS of the extract is now in Ayr Academy.
3 Ibid. (1933), pp. 5–6.—Discovered by Mr. Davidson Cook in David Lester Richardson, Literary chit-chat (Calcutta, 1848).
4 Ibid., p. 8.—Text taken from a Sotheby catalogue of June 2–3, 1881.
5 Ibid. (1935), pp. 9–10, and facsimile.
6 Ibid. (1936), p. 4 and facsimile.—The MS forms part of the Campbell Collection in the newly opened Burns Museum at Largs, Ayrshire.
7 Ibid. (1935), pp. 6–7 and facsimile.—MS now in Ayr Academy.
8 Ibid. (1933), pp. 6–7.—From a rare facsimile discovered by Mr. Davidson Cook.
9 Ibid. (1936), p. 2.—MS in the Royal Technical College, Glasgow.
10 MLN, xlviii (1933), 168.
11 Pp. 18–77.
12 In Dec., 1934, the MS was in the possession of the late Mr. Charles Sessler of Philadelphia, whose permission to collate was the last of his many kindnesses to me.
13 “The Library is required by the trust indentures under which it was founded ‘to render the books, manuscripts, and other contents available … to scholars and other persons engaged in research or creative work’.”—Huntington Library Bulletin, No. i (May, 1931), p. 1. … “Owners are shy of so much as acknowledging the existence of certain holograph letters and verses.”—Henley and Henderson: The Poetry of Robert Burns (Edinburgh, 1896–97), iii, 296.
14 Text supplied by the kindness of Mrs. Frederic Sinker, New York. The MS was sold at the American Art Association—Anderson Galleries, N. Y., 12 Jan., 1932.
15 See Chambers-Wallace: Life and Works of Robert Burns (Edinburgh, 1896), ii, 107 ff. Cf. also my article, “Burns's Journal of his Border Tour,” PMLA, xlix, 1107–15.
16 From a transcript supplied through the courtesy of Messrs. Maggs Brothers, London. The MS was sold at Sotheby's, 13 Nov., 1934.
17 Burns Chronicle, 1930 and 1932, front advertising pages.
18 Catherine Carswell: Robert Burns (London: Duckworth, 1933), 128. See also my article, “The Suppressed Poems of Burns,” MP, xxx (1932), 53 ff.
19 Letters, i, 115.
20 Cf. Ibid., p. 133.
21 Cf. Ibid., p. 226, MLN, xlviii, 168, and PMLA, xlix, 1113.
22 From a transcript furnished by the courtesy of Mr. G. W. Shirley, Librarian, Ewart Public Library, Dumfries. Mr. Shirley states that in the copy it is frequently impossible to distinguish between capitals and lower-case letters; he adds that “in printing Burns's practice should be followed rather than the copyist's, who evidently had a weakness for capitals.” This I have accordingly done.
23 Scots Magazine, n.s. xxi (1934), 282.
24 Chronicle (1898), p. 39.
25 Transcribed, 28 Dec., 1934, from the holograph then in the possession of Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, Philadelphia. Cf. Letters, ii, 172–173.
26 H. W. Thompson (editor), The Anecdotes and Egotisms of Henry Mackenzie (Oxford, 1927), p. xxxi f.
27 Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor (Boston, 1909), i, 51.
28 This information was courteously given by William Roscoe, Esq., of Birchamp, Gloucs., present representative of the family, and fifth in descent from the historian.