PHILOLOGICAL

Six Autograph Letters Signed and one Autograph Note Signed (all 'J. H. Trumbull') from the philologist James Hammond Trumbull to Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury, mainly on a paper by the latter in the Transactions of the American Philological Association

Author: 
James Hammond Trumbull (1821-1897), Yale-educated American philologist and Republican Secretary of the State of Connecticut, 1861-1866 [Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury (1838-1915), literary critic]
Publication details: 
All eight items from Hartford, Connecticut (one on letterhead of the Watkinson Library and two on letterheads of the American Philological Association). All from 1871.
£400.00

The seven items in good condition, on lightly-aged paper. Totalling 10pp, 12mo. A correspondence between two Yale men. The first six items (between 11 April and 29 June 1871) relate to Lounsbury's 'paper on old English verb forms, for publication in the Transactions [of the Amerian Philological Association]'. A letter of 8 May 1871 is revealing of the difficulties encountered by Trumbull in editing the journal: 'Your paper is safe in hand, and I do not apprehend any trouble with it, typographical or other.

Autograph Letter Signed ('J. H. Trumbull') from the philologist and Republican politician James Hammond Trumbull to A. S. Train, complaining of the dificulty of dealing with his query at 'moderate length'.

Author: 
James Hammond Trumbull (1821-1897), Yale-educated American philologist and Republican Secretary of the State of Connecticut, 1861-1866
Publication details: 
Hartford; 24 April 1876.
£90.00

1p., 12mo. Good, on lightly-aged paper. He begins: 'It would be tolerably easy to write a duodecimo of a couple of hundred pages by way of answer to yours of the 22d, but really I do not know how to talk about it in a letter of modest length.' He refers him to 'newspapers, magazines, special biographies, encyclopaedias, histories of the several colonies, and of the Revolution, - passim'. He concludes: 'Such a subject must be worked up like a patchwork quilt. There is no one book better than another, in which to look for facts and authorities.'

Autograph Letter Signed to Wheatley.

Author: 
Edwin Norris (1795-1872), linguist and Assyriologist [Henry Benjamin Wheatley (1838-1917), bibliographer, editor and London topographer; Frederick James Furnivall]
Publication details: 
17 August 1865. Brompton.
£35.00

12mo, 2 pp. Thirteen lines of text. Good. The letter possibly relates to Furnivall's Early English Text Society, founded in 1865. He is enclosing a Post Office Order for a guinea, but, as he 'said to Mr Furnivall last year', he does not consider himself a subscriber, 'wishing to reserve the right of withdrawal in case of finding it inconvenient to pay, which will certainly be the case when I give up my official position'. Nevertheless asks Wheatley to remind him 'when the time comes for collection'.

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