Item 10 - Letter from Evelyn May Albright to R. B. McKerrow

2 single sheets

Box 13, Department of English, University of Chicago.—Praises his book, and suggests arrangements for reviewing and promoting it in America. Thanks him for reading her manuscript on Spenser and Lipsius, and refers to her forthcoming article on the date of the Mutability cantos.

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Transcript

Box 13 The University of Chicago, Department of English
November 13. 1927

Dear Mr. McKerrow:

Your fine book, Introduction to Bibliography, came yesterday, and I am delighted with it. I have read it in part already, but lent it for a few days to Professor Tom Peete Cross, so that he could recommend it in a new manual on bibliographical method (a beginner’s book for first year graduate students) {1}. By the way, I think Professor Cross would be the best reviewer in America for your book and that it is the kind of book he would like to review. If your publishers have not already sent to Modern Philology a review copy, I would suggest designating Professor Cross as reviewer, & that the copy be sent to him directly. Professors Manly and Crane will help recommend to students, and so shall I. Modern Philology and Modern Language Notes seem to me the most important reviewing places to reach scholars & text editors in this country. Of course, if your publishers would insert paid advertisement†, the Publications of the Modern Language Association would be the best place, as it reaches more interested people than any other publication. I’m not a member of the American Bibliographical Association, and I don’t know how useful they would be in advertising foreign works; but their membership is much smaller than the M.L.A., anyway.

I have ordered several copies for Harper Library at the University of Chicago, and I think more will be ordered later. All the libraries ought to buy it. It would help to have it recommended by the American Library Association, which issues from Washington lists of books desirable for libraries to buy. I don’t know the details of how this is worked, but, if I hear, will drop you a note. You ought to get a good American sale to add to the English. It’s a fine book. I shall study it carefully and thoroughly, and it will help me greatly. Thank you for remembering me.

I received the manuscript on Spenser and Lipsius {2}, and thank you for your kindness in reading and criticising it. I am aware of the difficulty of proving that Lipsius’ Constancy was known to Englishmen before the edition printed in London in 1586. It was written in the 70’s, however. I shall pull in the horns of the argument and try to suggest no more than evidence warrants, and offer it to an American journal later. As to the date of the Mutability cantos, I am practically certain they were written 1579-80, and an article on that will appear in April Studies in Philology. {3}

I am sorry I wounded your feelings by calling you “Professor”. Our new President in a speech recently assured us that Professors are no longer branded as such by their poverty and eccentricity, etc., but that the best of them in a crowd could pass for merchants! So you see my hailing you as Professor isn’t quite so bad as it seemed.

The antics of Mayor Bill Thompson of Chicago keep us all amused. He is too funny to weep or fume over.

Thanking you cordially for the gift of your very attractive and useful book. I remain

Sincerely yours,
Evelyn May Albright

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{1} Presumably a revised edition of his List of Books and Articles designed to serve as an Introduction to the Bibliography and Methods of English Literary History, first published in 1919.

{2} Presumably Albright’s article on ‘Spenser’s Mutability and Lipsius’s Constancy’, which was still ‘not yet published’ in 1929 (see Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. xliv, no. 3 (Sept. 1929), p. 722), and seems never to have seen print. Albright may have submitted it to McKerrow for possible inclusion in the Review of English Studies.

{3} ‘Spenser’s Reasons for Rejecting the Cantos of Mutability’, Studies in Philology, vol. xxv, no. 2 (Apr. 1928), pp. 93-127.