My dear Mr Macmillan I can quite enter into what you say of that first chapter’s meagreness. There were things I wanted to keep in reserve, and I do not think one’s mind gets so worked up to the point /at first as after having gone through all the preliminaries and preparation. I wanted to keep Bethlehem by daylight /on the Gleaning of Right for the Anointing of David, and therefore made less of the scenery ... continue reading

My dear Miss Yonge, It is most kind of you to take my crude criticism in so good part. I did think of the parts, and your possible motive in dwelling on the opening chapter in the slight way you have done. Still with an eye to what is coming I cannot but think that the opening should be fuller, more sonorous and in a higher key. But I have asked Mr Clay to let ... continue reading

My dear Mr Macmillan,

Thank you for Mr Trevelyan’s Cawnpore, which will I am sure be terribly engrossing reading.

I waited to write both because I was trying to satisfy myself with the beginning of Moses, and because I wanted to see what the London Library would send me. And the latter is just at present - Nothing, so I should be very much obliged if you would lend me Stanley’s Sermons in Palestine and Thomson’s and ... continue reading

My dear Mr Macmillan, You are very kind about the undertaking, and I certainly should much regret giving it up, if those very capricious things ideas can be brought into accordance with the plan. But if it will not disturb your arrangements very much, I think I had better look to its completion for the autumn of 1866, rather than the autumn of 1865. I never have quite so much time in the summer, or rather ... continue reading