Stuk 2 - Letter from Horace Hart to R. B. McKerrow

1 single sheet, 1 envelope

University Press, Oxford.—Agrees that special arrangements will have to be made for printing Nashe’s ‘Choise of Valentines’.

(With an envelope.)

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Transcript

University Press, Oxford
April 10, 1905.

R. B. McKerrow, Esq.

Dear Mr. McKerrow,

Nashe Vol. III.

I gather from your memo. of March 24, that you propose to call upon me about the “Choosing of Valentines”, {1} on account of the character of which, as you say, some special arrangements will have to be made. I would like to know, do you propose to put this poem in the work without comment? Or do you propose to issue some notice with it, saying that it is optional to have it or not to have it; or in what way do you decide to deal with it? I shall want some special guarantee in regard to this poem which is not of a nature to be issued as if it were ordinary literature.

Are you able to say when you will call? It ought to be a day when I am not in London,—that is, it ought not to be next Thursday; {2} and also not on any Saturday.

Yours faithfully,
Horace Hart

[Direction on envelope:] R. B. McKerrow, Esq., 30, Manchester Street, Manchester Square, LONDON, W.

[On the back of the envelope are the following notes, presumably by McKerrow:]
Passages omitted in C. Agrippa
Schelhorn Amoenitates Litterariæ 1725 ii. 510–25
See Delrio Disq. Magic.
Thevet Portraits des hommes illustres 1584 {3}
Thomas Block {4}

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Typed, except the signature, a few corrections, and the notes on the envelope. The envelope was postmarked at Oxford at 8.30 p.m. on 10 April 1905, and at London at 3 a.m. the next day.

{1} An erotic poem by Nashe, also known as ‘The Choise of Valentines’ . See Works of Nashe, iii. 397–416.

{2} 13th.

{3} The books referred to are Amoenitates Literariae, by Johann George Schelhorn (1725); Disquisitiones Magicae, by Martin Del Rio (1608); and Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres, by André Thevet (1584).

{4} This name, the reading of which is uncertain, is at right angles to the other notes.