Item 2 - Book containing copies of 'Letters from Thomas Carlyle, chiefly concerning Cromwell' and 'Fragments of some letters from an ill-starred Man of Genius [Savile Morton]'

1 vol; manuscript; some letters and sketches pasted in.
Enclosures: 1 loose sheet; 3 three sheets taped together; 1 loose sheet previously pasted in.

1 loose sheet at front: 'Copies. Letters from Carlyle - on "Cromwell", Extract of Letters from S[avile] M[orton]'

'Edward Fitzgerald. Littlegrange. Woodbridge' written on flyleaf, recto; on verso 'Letters from Thomas Carlyle, chiefly concerning Cromwell'

ff 1-36r: Copies by FitzGerald of letters from Carlyle, dated mid-Sept 1842-6 Nov 1874, with occasional notes and annotations by FitzGerald. Most letters written directly into book, though ff 34-36 (letter of 6 Nov 1874, not in FitzGerald's hand) pasted in.

ff 36v: Note by FitzGerald on 'the following Enquiries concerning th[e] one Long Parliament Election on record', sent to him by Carlyle in about 1846 or 1847 [in fact in 1844] 'to be answered & elucidated by Mr Davy, an old Suffolk Gentleman then residing in... Ufford near Woodbridge'. Davy was 'duly acknowledged & complimented as "Dryasdust"' in the paper Carlyle published on the subject in Fraser's Magazine [Oct 1844].

ff 37-39: Copy of the enquiries on the Long Parliament election (as above) sent by Carlyle to FitzGerald.

Reading from other end of book: 'Extract from letters of Savile Morton' written on flyleaf, verso; Morton's name later crossed out and 'an ill-starred Man of Genius'. 'Finished copying out at Midnight, Sunday May 27, 1866. Edward FitzGerald, Market-hall, Woodbridge' is legible below despite further crossing out. A loose sheet is pasted to the bottom of the flyleaf, on which Fitzgerald has written 'Fragments of some Letters from an ill-starred Man of Genius'' and added in pencil below 'for a Notice of Morton see at th[e] end of th[e] Letters'; other notes in pencil are probably in another hand.

ff i-iii: Three sheets bound together with tape found loose after flyleaf, containing a biographical note on Morton in FitzGerald's hand.

ff 1-61r: Copies by FitzGerald of letters from Morton, dated 28 Oct [18]40-Jul 1845, with occasional notes and annotations by Fitzgerald. Occasional pages have been cut out, and a series of stubs (about 11 ff) follows f 61. The letters themselves, or portions of them, are sometimes pasted in, particularly to include illustrations by Morton, as follows:

f 5r: 'Petrarch's Chair', pen and ink illustration
f 16r: Part letter of 10 Sept 1842 (once pasted in, now loose)
f 17r: Part letter with pen and ink sketch of ruins in Rome
f 23r: Pen and ink sketch of lamp.
f 50: Part letter, discussing Keats.

Add.MS.c.6.2b, an incomplete original letter from Savile Morton to Edward Fitzgerald, and Add.MS.c.6.2a, a letter from Sidney Lee [to William Aldis Wright?] about Morton's death, were found loose inside this volume.

O.4.24/1: Note of receipt of Carlyle's letters by J. A. Froude which mentions FitzGerald's 'own Book of Extracts for W. A. W's own Library'.

See Carlyle, 'An Election to the Long Parliament', Fraser's Magazine 30 (Oct 1844): 379-393. On the writing of this piece, and FitzGerald's role as intermediary between Carlyle and Davy, see Trela, D. J. “The Writing of ‘An Election to the Long Parliament’: Carlyle, Primary Research and the Book Clubs.” Carlyle Studies Annual, no. 14 (1994): 71–82. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44945790.