This book, published in 1895 for the centenary of the celebrated Romantic poet John Keats (1795 1821), was edited by Harry Buxton Forman (1842 1917). Forman was a Post Office administrator and a keen literary scholar, who had earlier produced important editions of Shelley and Keats. He has since become notorious for his involvement in making fake literary 'discoveries'. This centenary collection of 214 'racy, lively, inimitably good-tempered' letters by Keats aimed for completeness and contained several previously unpublished communications to addressees such as the Jeffrey family. It...

Mary Delany (nee Granville, 1700 88) is best known for her cut-paper illustrations of plants she completed nearly 1,000 of these detailed botanical pictures. Widowed after an unhappy first marriage, she lived in London, attended court, and was a favourite of George III and Queen Charlotte. After being widowed for a second time, and at the age of 74, she began her plant illustrations: failing eyesight caused her to abandon the work in 1784. Delany knew many of the leading cultural figures of the eighteenth century, including Handel and Swift. An enthusiastic correspondent, she wrote and...

Mary Delany (nee Granville, 1700 88) is best known for her cut-paper illustrations of plants she completed nearly 1,000 of these detailed botanical pictures. Widowed after an unhappy first marriage, she lived in London, attended court, and was a favourite of George III and Queen Charlotte. After being widowed for a second time, and at the age of 74, she began her plant illustrations: failing eyesight caused her to abandon the work in 1784. Delany knew many of the leading cultural figures of the eighteenth century, including Handel and Swift. An enthusiastic correspondent, she wrote and...

Mary Delany (nee Granville, 1700 88) is best known for her cut-paper illustrations of plants she completed nearly 1,000 of these botanical pictures. Widowed after an unhappy first marriage, she lived in London, attended court, and was a favourite of George III and Queen Charlotte. After being widowed for a second time, and at the age of 74, she began her plant illustrations: failing eyesight caused her to abandon them in 1784. Delany knew many of the leading cultural figures of the eighteenth century, including Handel and Swift. An enthusiastic correspondent, she wrote and received hundreds...

Mary Delany (nee Granville, 1700 88) is best known for her cut-paper illustrations of plants she completed nearly 1,000 of these botanical pictures. Widowed after an unhappy first marriage, she lived in London, attended court, and was a favourite of George III and Queen Charlotte. After being widowed for a second time, and at the age of 74, she began her plant illustrations: failing eyesight caused her to abandon them in 1784. Delany knew many of the leading cultural figures of the eighteenth century, including Handel and Swift. An enthusiastic correspondent, she wrote and received hundreds...

Mary Delany (nee Granville, 1700 88) is best known for her cut-paper illustrations of plants she completed nearly 1,000 of these botanical pictures. Widowed after an unhappy first marriage, she lived in London, attended court, and was a favourite of George III and Queen Charlotte. After being widowed for a second time, and at the age of 74, she began her plant illustrations: failing eyesight caused her to abandon them in 1784. Delany knew many of the leading cultural figures of the eighteenth century, including Handel and Swift. An enthusiastic correspondent, she wrote and received hundreds...

Mary Delany (nee Granville, 1700 88) is best known for her cut-paper illustrations of plants she completed nearly 1,000 of these botanical pictures. Widowed after an unhappy first marriage, she lived in London, attended court, and was a favourite of George III and Queen Charlotte. After being widowed for a second time, and at the age of 74, she began her plant illustrations: failing eyesight caused her to abandon the work in 1784. Delany knew many of the leading cultural figures of the eighteenth century, including Handel and Swift. An enthusiastic correspondent, she wrote and received...

These letters to Gilbert White (1720 93), the author of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789; also reissued in this series) were published in 1907. They were written between 1744 and 1790 by John Mulso (1721 91); brother of the bluestocking Mrs Chapone, to White, whom he had met when both were undergraduates at Oxford. White's letters to Mulso were unfortunately destroyed, frustrating plans to publish a 'most interesting and amusing series of letters' between intimate friends, but the remaining half of the correspondence, 'containing almost the only contemporary illustration...

John Forster (1812 76), an exact contemporary of Charles Dickens, was one of his closest friends, and acted for him (as for many other authors) as advisor, editor, proofreader, agent and marketing manager: according to Thackeray, 'whenever anyone is in a scrape we all fly to him for refuge. He is omniscient and works miracles.' Forster was Dickens' literary executor, and was left the manuscripts of many of the novels, which he in turn left (along with the rest of his magnificent library) to the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum). He was ideally placed to write a...

John Forster (1812 76), an exact contemporary of Charles Dickens, was one of his closest friends, and acted for him (as for many other authors) as advisor, editor, proofreader, agent and marketing manager: according to Thackeray, 'whenever anyone is in a scrape we all fly to him for refuge. He is omniscient and works miracles.' Forster was Dickens' literary executor, and was left the manuscripts of many of the novels, which he in turn left (along with the rest of his magnificent library) to the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum). He was ideally placed to write a...