3691. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 2 June 1821
3691. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 2 June 1821*
My dear W.
It was 200£ which Murray gave me for the Life of Nelson. [1] He offered me 100 to enlarge the paper in the Review so as to make a little volume of it. Thinking this might be soon done, I accepted the offer, – & found what I ought to have foreseen, that the sketch of a book cannot be filled up like the outline of a picture. Two volumes were produced instead of one. He paid me the hundred & said he hoped the sale of the work would enable him to triple that sum; – but a second hundred when the second edition was published is all that I have received.
The lives which I xxx wrote for the QR. are one day to form part of a series of British Lives for which he will pay me 500£ an 8vo volume. I am now finishing one of Oliver Cromwell. [2] Some day I will send you the proposed list for your consideration & advice.
I believe Murray will publish a Collection of our Historical Memoirs. - [3]
God bless you
RS.
I have no intention of moving southward this year, being far too busy.
June 2. 1821.
Notes
* Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn
Esqre M.P./ Whitehall/ London
Stamped: KESWICK/
298
Postmark: FREE/ 3 JU 3/ 1821
MS: National Library of Wales, MS
4813D. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished. BACK
[1] Southey’s Life of Nelson (1813), an expansion of his article in Quarterly Review, 3 (February 1810), 218–262. BACK