GE to John Blackwood, Richmond, 1 April 1858
Title
GE to John Blackwood, Richmond, 1 April 1858
Title
GE to John Blackwood, Richmond, 1 April 1858
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
John Blackwood
Date(s)
- 1858-04-01
Place
Richmond
Letter Content
GE to John Blackwood, Richmond, 1 April 1858
MS: National Library of Scotland.
Richmond | April 1. 58.
My dear Sir
I am obliged to you for the cheque for £60 -- the final payment for the first edition of Clerical Scenes.
Your appreciatory criticism of "Adam Bede" is highly gratifying to me. I am especially pleased that you appear to feel with me about my pet characters -- Adam and Dinah.
But I entertain what I think is well-founded objection against telling you in a bare brief manner the course of my story. The soul of art lies in its treatment and not in its subject. If a dramatist were to tell a manager that he had a fine tragedy in preparation, the subject of which was a man with a sore foot on a desert island, it is probable the manager would not feel any very brilliant hopes. Yet the Philoctetes is one of the finest dramas in the world.
It is true my theme is not so meagre as a sore foot, nor am I Sophocles; but the mere skeleton of my story would probably give rise in your mind to objections which would be suggested by the treatment other writers have given to the same tragic incidents in the human lot -- objections which would lie far away from my treatment. The Heart of Midlothian would probably have been thought highly objectionable if a skeleton of the story had been given by a writer whose reputation did not place him above question. And the same story told by a Balzacian French writer would probably have made a book that no young person could read without injury. Yet what girl of twelve was ever injured by the Heart of Midlothian? Of artistic writing it may be said pre-eminently -- "to the pure writer all things are pure." 384
I am not arguing against your hesitation to publish "Adam Bede" in Maga, but simply stating my reasons for objecting to tell more of the story than I have already told you -- namely, that it is partly tragic.
It is natural that you should not have sufficient confidence in me to enter on the publication without more precise foreknowledge though you can certainly not be more solicitious about the moral spirit of what you publish in the Magazine, than I am about the moral spirit of what I write. Under the circumstances, it will perhaps be better definitively to give up the idea of monthly publication, and await the printing of the book in three volumes.
Do not for a moment suppose that I look exclusively from my own point of view and fail to appreciate yours. But the nature of the writer is stronger than all circumstances. I could not write at all under a sense of doubt and distrust.
I shall forward you the amount of another part to-morrow. It is possible the perusal of that may in some degree modify your views. In any case I am always very heartily
Yours, with obligation
George Eliot.
John Blackwood Esq.
MS: National Library of Scotland.
Richmond | April 1. 58.
My dear Sir
I am obliged to you for the cheque for £60 -- the final payment for the first edition of Clerical Scenes.
Your appreciatory criticism of "Adam Bede" is highly gratifying to me. I am especially pleased that you appear to feel with me about my pet characters -- Adam and Dinah.
But I entertain what I think is well-founded objection against telling you in a bare brief manner the course of my story. The soul of art lies in its treatment and not in its subject. If a dramatist were to tell a manager that he had a fine tragedy in preparation, the subject of which was a man with a sore foot on a desert island, it is probable the manager would not feel any very brilliant hopes. Yet the Philoctetes is one of the finest dramas in the world.
It is true my theme is not so meagre as a sore foot, nor am I Sophocles; but the mere skeleton of my story would probably give rise in your mind to objections which would be suggested by the treatment other writers have given to the same tragic incidents in the human lot -- objections which would lie far away from my treatment. The Heart of Midlothian would probably have been thought highly objectionable if a skeleton of the story had been given by a writer whose reputation did not place him above question. And the same story told by a Balzacian French writer would probably have made a book that no young person could read without injury. Yet what girl of twelve was ever injured by the Heart of Midlothian? Of artistic writing it may be said pre-eminently -- "to the pure writer all things are pure." 384
I am not arguing against your hesitation to publish "Adam Bede" in Maga, but simply stating my reasons for objecting to tell more of the story than I have already told you -- namely, that it is partly tragic.
It is natural that you should not have sufficient confidence in me to enter on the publication without more precise foreknowledge though you can certainly not be more solicitious about the moral spirit of what you publish in the Magazine, than I am about the moral spirit of what I write. Under the circumstances, it will perhaps be better definitively to give up the idea of monthly publication, and await the printing of the book in three volumes.
Do not for a moment suppose that I look exclusively from my own point of view and fail to appreciate yours. But the nature of the writer is stronger than all circumstances. I could not write at all under a sense of doubt and distrust.
I shall forward you the amount of another part to-morrow. It is possible the perusal of that may in some degree modify your views. In any case I am always very heartily
Yours, with obligation
George Eliot.
John Blackwood Esq.
Signature
George Eliot.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to John Blackwood, Richmond, 1 April 1858, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/92701