"With Real Admiration": More Correspondence between Melville and Bentley

Abstract

T NTIL A FEW YEARS ago when John H. Birss published several newly \LJ found letters of Herman Melville to Richard Bentley,' little had been known of Melville's relations with that fine, frank, off-handed old gentleman, the English publisher of Mardi, Redburn, White-lacket, and The Whale. Included herewith are six new letters: one from Melville to Bentley, and five Bentley letters to Melville, the latter answers to the correspondence which Birss edited. It is not necessary to elaborate on their importance; students of Melville will immediately recognize their value. The first letter is published with kind permission of the University of Illinois library, which now houses many of the Bentley papers.2 Bentley's answers are taken from the publisher's letter books in the British Museum, where I was permitted to make transcriptions. The texts of the five Bentley letters, it should be pointed out, are made up from the publisher's copies, not the originals, and in all probability are in the hand of E. L. Morgan, the confidential clerk who made duplicates of much of the outgoing correspondence from New Burlington Street.