Lady Morgan’s Memoirs
Lady Morgan to Henry Colburn, 16 January 1838
Stafford Row,
Tuesday, 16th January, 1838.
Dear Sir,
I beg to thank you myself for volunteering in a letter
to Sir Charles the offer of suppressing
a passage in the Diary of
Queen Caroline, which you say,
“refers in a very bad spirit to Lady
Morgan.” I never in my life interfered with the
printed expression of an opinion relative to myself, personal or literary; of
this you are well aware, and whether you repeat through future editions, or
suppress in the next, a passage which you say ought never to have appeared, I
leave to your own taste, feeling, and discretion. On your confession that
“unfortunately the work was never properly examined by you, and
was hastily published,” &c., I beg to re-![]()
| SETTLEMENT IN LONDON—1838. | 437 |
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mark, that such conduct in a publisher will be taken by the public as
anything but an apology for the consequences, and to remind you that in the
course of the many years you published for me, I have repeatedly urged for the
interests of literature, and your own, that you should confine your
publications to works which should, in a moral as well as in a literary sense,
reflect credit on and give consideration to the publisher. Among the many
temporary causes which in the present moment have tended to degrade British
literature, is the promptitude of publishers to produce such works as the one
you have just brought out. You say, that “on inquiring how it was that the passage came to be overlooked by the reviser, I
am told that it was thought that the note at the foot of the page was
considered as a perfect refutation of the unjust and ill-natured
remarks.” That note, like all the other apologetical
notes in the book, only proves that the author was fully cognisant of the
malice and impropriety of the text. In return for the many kind expressions in
your letter with respect to myself, I beg to reiterate an advice so often
given: in a literary, as well as in a social sense, confine your dealings to
honest men and women; when you did so, you were among the first of European
publishers.
I am, dear sir,
Yours, &c.,
Queen Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1768-1821)
Married the Prince of Wales in 1795 and separated in 1796; her husband instituted
unsuccessful divorce proceedings in 1820 when she refused to surrender her rights as
queen.
Sir Thomas Charles Morgan (1780-1843)
English physician and philosophical essayist who married the novelist Sydney Owenson in
1812; he was the author of
Sketches of the Philosophy of Morals
(1822). He corresponded with Cyrus Redding.
