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31 Endcliffe Rise Road, Sheffield.—Discusses McKerrow’s plan of establishing a journal devoted solely to English studies.

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Transcript

31 Endcliffe Rise Road, Sheffield
Nov. 12. 1923

My dear McKerrow,

Many thanks for your kind letter. I am rejoiced to hear that English studies are to have an organ of their own in this country, and that you are to direct it. I have written again & again—to E. K. Chambers I think among others—urging the inadequacy of the MLR to meet the demands made on it & properly to represent English studies {1}—& I have been surprized not to hear earlier of a movement for a Journal devoted to English studies alone.

I pressed on Robertson {2} some time ago (within the last twelvemonths) the desirability of breaking up the MLR so that the English section could appear as a separate Journal. He was evidently against this (believing I suppose that a MLR without English in it could not pay its way)—but said that he thought the solution was a separate Journal for English.

I have at present matter in hand and reviews due that will take all the space for several numbers to come. This means that a book often does not get reviewed in print till 2 years or more after its appearance. It also means that I have to print particularly articles so abstruse or devoid of general interest that they have no chance of getting in elsewhere—& to turn off a popular well-written article—which may be just as valuable—on to some other journal. I have just succeeded in getting an excellent article of Stoll’s on Hamlet into the Contemporary. {3}—There is such an abundance of good matter crying to be published that I hope you will not commit yourself in a hurry to including so much of the nature of Reports of Societies &c. as to limit your powers of publishing the articles & reviews you want. I hope however you will include as the German journals do a page or so of Necrology when required. It has seemed to me sad that the MLR should not be able to include a word on great scholars such as Raleigh & Ker & Vaughan & H. Bradley when they die. {4}

Of course I think the effect on the MLR will be serious. If your standard is as high as ours has been—& it is likely to be higher rather than lower—why should an English student pay for a journal in which English studies occupy only ⅓ of the space as against one in which they hold the field? This is, if the price of your Journal is the same as that of the MLR. Perhaps you will make it less in order to widen your circulation among people who are not actually scholars themselves.

Am I at liberty to send on your letter to Robertson? or are you writing to him?

I understand from your letter that your Journal will not be specially connected with the English Association. However it will no doubt attract the special interest of the E.A. That Association for the last 2 years has made a grant to the MLR to enable it to give 8 more pages to English Of course it will be important for us to know if we may depend on that grant in the future. I am pleased to see that you do not apparently intend giving another quarterly Bibliography.

I suppose you dont intend to pay your contributors—unless for some special articles.

Writing for myself, not for MLR, I look forward with the greatest interest to your Journal. The less it aims at popularity, the more it aims at representing the best English Scholarship, philological, literary-historical, & literary, in my eyes the better—I suppose you will leave articles of technical bibliography rather to the Library?

(I am glad to see that Herford in today’s Manchester Guardian accepts the conclusions of Maunde Thompson &c. as probably sound.) {5}

I dont know if it would be possible to come to any concordat in order to avoid the duplication of reviews. There are a lot of American books sent out by Milford to which justice wd be done if they were reviewed in one English journal only. On the other hand as things are, many books dont get reviewed in the MLR at all. [Footnote: ‘I have not received a copy of the Sir Thomas More book—nor of Herford’s book on Recent Shakespeare Criticism, nor of All. Nicoll’s book on Restoration Drama.’ {6}] The ideal would be for every book of value to be noticed in one journal or the other. I am afraid if this is to be achieved duplication of reviews should be avoided. It might be difficult however to come to any agreement in the matter.

Ever yours
G. C. Moore Smith

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{1} Moore Smith was editor of the English section of the Modern Language Review from 1915 to 1927. See MLR, xxxvi (1941). 246.

{2} J. G. Robertson, founder and chief editor of the MLR. See MLR, xxviii (1933), 19.

{3} ‘Recent Criticism of Hamlet’, Contemporary Review, cxxv (1924), 347–57.

{4} Sir Walter Raleigh and C. E. Vaughan died in 1922, W. P. Ker and Henry Bradley in 1923,

{5} The reference is to a review of Shakespeare’s Hand in the Play of Sir Thomas More, ed. A. W. Pollard (1923), one of the chapters of which was written by the palaeographer Sir Edward Maunde Thompson. C. H. Herford was a regular reviewer for the Manchester Guardian.

{6} The books referred to are Shakespeare’s Hand in the Play of Sir Thomas More (see the previous note), A Sketch of Recent Shakespearean Investigation, 1893–1923, and A History of Restoration Drama, 1600 to 1700, all published in 1923.

Oriel College, Oxford.—Supports his idea of issuing a scholarly English journal. Refers to his own unsuccessful attempt in that direction, and makes some suggestions.

(With an envelope.)

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Transcript

Oriel College, Oxford
1 Dec. 1923

Dear Dr. McKerrow

Dover Wilson writes to me of your project of issuing a scholarly English Journal. I sympathize fully with you. Some years ago I mooted here the question of an ‘Oxford Journal of English Studies’, to be conducted by the English School, the staff of the Dictionary, & the Clarendon Press. I also tried to get the English Association to move, but I failed.

I shall be glad to give any help I can, but—frankly—I dread just now taking on more work.

Wilson asks about a scholar for Middle English: R. W. Chambers, if you can get him—a scholar & a literary critic in one, as his Beowulf book & his writings on Piers Plowman show.

I have one suggestion. Undertakings of this kind always seem to me to get water-logged by the review part. Need every damned thing anybody prints—if you don’t mind my violent way of putting it—get reviewed? Could you without invidiousness select the works {1} you would review, or from time to time print short surveys of study in a particular author or a particular subject. R. W. Chambers some time wrote an excellent report of the stage which the Piers Plowman controversy had reached. {2}

Your paper would, I suppose, be quarterly; or even three times a year, leaving the summer holiday free. I should suggest for its working motto not only Ne quid nimis, but Ne quid saepius. {3}

Yours sincerely
Percy Simpson {4}

Twelve years ago Henry Bradley said of Kenneth Sisam (now at the Clarendon Press) that he was far the first of the young men working at Old & Middle English. Enlist him. I can help if you don’t know him.

Nichol Smith for the eighteenth century if you can get him: he is difficult to get hold of. And, for an occasional article, R. W. Chapman.

On Elizabethan English F. P. Wilson.

From time to time I come across some very able young men. I should like to introduce them to you occasionally.

This is a disjointed letter, but I am in bed with a cold.

PS

[Direction on envelope:] Dr. R. B. McKerrow. | Enderley | Great Missenden | Bucks.

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The envelope was postmarked at Headington, Oxford, at 2.30 p.m. on 3 December 1923.

{1} Reading uncertain.

{2} ‘The Authorship of “Piers Plowman”’, MLR, v (1910). 1–32.

{3} i.e. not only ‘nothing in excess’, but ‘nothing too often’.

{4} Followed by ‘PTO’. A page ends here.