Beschreibung:

Title: Autograph Letter Signed from British poet Frederick Locker, friend of great writers of England and America, predicts war with the United States Author: Locker, F[rederick] Place: [London] Publisher: Date: August 6, 1861 Description: 3 pp. Written in the fifth month of the American Civil War to an unknown correspondent in the United States, a fine letter showing Locker’s wide literary acquaintance on both sides of the Atlantic - as well as his fear of future Anglo-American conflict: “…I returned to England a week or two ago and found your kind letter and parcels awaiting me. I am charmed to have the large paper edition of Praed’s Poem’s…I sent the copies to Mr. Coleridge and Mr. [Willkie?] Collins and had acknowledgements from both…I have written to Mr. Holmes to thank him for his 2 Vols. I did receive Mr. Saxe’s letter, as also one from Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Bryant. I have not heard from Mr. Lowell… I am not sorry to have Whitman, as he is a curiosity…I hope if you ever come across a notice of my book you will kindly send it me…I congratulate you on your late War successes, but you know it is very difficult for an Englishman to satisfy an American of the warmth of his sympathy. Your newspapers say that America should declare war with England…I have talked to many Americans and they all say, and I believe them, that when the War is over, the North will declare War with England. Now we do not wish to go to War, and it is very difficult for us to sympathize with a nation that intends to go to War with us when it suits them. If the North overcame the South, which you say is not far distant, I feel sure they will declare War with England…” Frederick Locker-Lampson (1821-1895) was a Victorian poet and famed bibliophile - his Rowfant collection, “one of the famous private libraries of the world”, was sold in America after his death. A friend of the great British writers of his time - Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope, Eliot, Rossetti, Swinburne and Stevenson, he had also had both personal and literary ties across the Atlantic – in this remarkable letter, he mentions Oliver Wendell Holmes William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell and Walt Whitman. So his fears, expressed here, early in the American Civil War, of a future war between the United States and England, were particularly poignant. Lot Amendments Condition: Small chip out of top edge, some spots of yellow, closed tear at fore edge of center crease; very good. Item number: 231241