John Blackwood to GHL, Edinburgh, 3 February 1872
Title
John Blackwood to GHL, Edinburgh, 3 February 1872
Title
John Blackwood to GHL, Edinburgh, 3 February 1872
Sender
John Blackwood
Recipient
George Henry Lewes
Date(s)
- 1872-02-03
Place
Edinburgh
Letter Content
John Blackwood to GHL, Edinburgh, 3 February 1872
Text: Copy in Blackwood Letter Book. Hitherto unpublished.
George Street | Edinburgh | February 3/72.
My Dear Lewes
I have repeatedly intended to write you with details and prospects of sales of Part 2 but Langford has been provokingly chary of information on the subject. In note with enclosed Mem. received today he says "there is nothing at present to indicate the progress of the Sale."
The falling off is in the numbers taken by Mudie and Smith and Sons and I would rather have this falling off in that quarter than in any other. The sale of part two will have turned 4000 and that of part one must be something like 5400. My feeling about the book is that you may make your minds easy as to its commercial success, and as to its merits as far as I have read they go beyond what even I had ventured to hope for.
Part two will more than sustain the reputation of Part I and as for Part three it is transcendant. I cannot imagine anything of its kind more neat than the capture of Lydgate. It is done with such fine touches, is so simple and so true. Who does not remember at battledore the effect of stooping at the same moment with a fair friend to pick up the fallen shuttlecock? 459 I remember one case in particular when if the tear had been there as well as the smile I would have been done for at a very early stage in life.
We have fine weather now and I hope Mrs. Lewes and you are both enjoying it and feeling better therefrom. Tell her my firm belief will turn to these Books of Middlemarch over and over, again and again. I find it so with Book one in my own house.
Ever Yours Truly
(signed) John Blackwood.
G. H. Lewes Esq.
Text: Copy in Blackwood Letter Book. Hitherto unpublished.
George Street | Edinburgh | February 3/72.
My Dear Lewes
I have repeatedly intended to write you with details and prospects of sales of Part 2 but Langford has been provokingly chary of information on the subject. In note with enclosed Mem. received today he says "there is nothing at present to indicate the progress of the Sale."
The falling off is in the numbers taken by Mudie and Smith and Sons and I would rather have this falling off in that quarter than in any other. The sale of part two will have turned 4000 and that of part one must be something like 5400. My feeling about the book is that you may make your minds easy as to its commercial success, and as to its merits as far as I have read they go beyond what even I had ventured to hope for.
Part two will more than sustain the reputation of Part I and as for Part three it is transcendant. I cannot imagine anything of its kind more neat than the capture of Lydgate. It is done with such fine touches, is so simple and so true. Who does not remember at battledore the effect of stooping at the same moment with a fair friend to pick up the fallen shuttlecock? 459 I remember one case in particular when if the tear had been there as well as the smile I would have been done for at a very early stage in life.
We have fine weather now and I hope Mrs. Lewes and you are both enjoying it and feeling better therefrom. Tell her my firm belief will turn to these Books of Middlemarch over and over, again and again. I find it so with Book one in my own house.
Ever Yours Truly
(signed) John Blackwood.
G. H. Lewes Esq.
Signature
(signed) John Blackwood.
Citation
John Blackwood, John Blackwood to GHL, Edinburgh, 3 February 1872, 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/95411