Leigh Hunt's Letters in The Luther Brewer Collection: Plans for a New Edition

Abstract

In 1934 the library acquired its magnificent Leigh Hunt collection from the estate of Luther Brewer of Cedar Rapids, a collection con­ taining more than 100 literary manuscripts, 1500 holograph letters, and 1700 books. Four years later a catalogue of Hunt’s correspond­ ence, My Leigh Hunt Library: The Holograph Letters, was issued under the imprint of The University of Iowa Press. The catalogue has been out of print for more than two decades, and since that time scholars whose interests are centered in nineteenth century English literature perennially have expressed hope that these letters might be edited anew and republished. This article, then, may serve as an an­ nouncement that Professor David Cheney of the University of Toledo and I are preparing a critical edition of all of Leigh Hunt’s letters in the Brewer Collection. This will include not only the correspondence published in The Holograph Letters and in Mr. Brewer’s other oc­ casional works, but also more than 250 Hunt letters which the library has been fortunate to acquire in the past thirty-one years. These letters span a period from Leigh Hunt’s youth in 1810 to the year of his death in 1859. Several of the letters were written to mem­ bers of his family: his wife, Marianne; his son, Thornton; his brother, John; and his nephew, Henry. A large group of letters about his books include correspondence with his publishers Henry Colburn, Edmund Ollier, Edward Moxon, and John Chapman. The majority of the let­ ters, however, are written to the members of Hunt’s circle, his bene­ factors, and the editors and authors of the day, and these recipients include Thomas Barnes, Vincent Novello, Serjeant Talfourd, Richard H. Horne, Tom Taylor, J. W. Dalby, William Moxon, and Percy Flor­