Item 25 - Postcard from R. W. Chambers to R. B. McKerrow

1 postcard

67 Selborne Road, Southgate, N.14.—The suggested article by Greg is too contentious to use as a specimen of the format of the new journal. Is not up to date with work on Chaucer, but will try to find someone else to write on that subject.

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Transcript

67 Selborne Road, Southgate, N.14

Dear McKerrow

Very many thanks for writing so fully.

I was rather afraid that if we were going to circulate any specimen of the format of the Review, Gregs article would look rather like rubbing it into Atkins. {1} I was very glad indeed to read Gregs article in the M.L.R. but as a specimen of a new Journal it is almost as contentious as certain things I have written myself. (“Woe is me my mother that thou hast born me, a man of strife & contention.”) {2}

I’d awfully like to write something for the Periodical: but I am not up in recent Chaucer work, I fear. I’ll try & think of someone who could do that satisfactorily. Thank you for asking me.

Yours
R W Chambers

[No direction.]

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{1} Greg had criticised J. W. H. Atkins’ edition of The Owl and the Nightingale (1922) in his article ‘On Editing Early English Texts. Some Bibliographical and Palaeographical Considerations’, Modern Language Review, xviii (1923). 281–5.

{2} Jeremiah xv. 10, slightly misquoted.