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Buckhampton
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standing you

I I believe I am right in under = terms Mus - Mat if the gross receipts reach be costs of publishing I shell receive the ₤45 back gains, & if they are more than the costs I shall have ₤15, added to half the receipts beyou the costs (i.c. assuming the expenditume the ₤100 The receipt ₤ 200 I shone have returned to me £75 +50 = 125.) Will you good enough to say too if the sime includes adverting to the customary extent, & about how long after my having the money

the book would appear?

be

Your faithfully
Thomas Hardy.

LETTER OF THOMAS HARDY TO HIS FIRST PUBLISHER, "OLD TINSLEY"

I paid five shillings for this letter many years ago, in London. Maggs, in his last catalogue, prices at fifteen guineas a much less interesting letter from Hardy to Arthur Symons, dated December 4, 1915, on the same subject.

which does honor to any collection. Although it is the original draft, there are very few corrections or interlineations, the page reproduced (see next page) being fairly representative.

Only those who are trying to complete their sets of Hardy know how difficult it is to find "Desperate Remedies" and "Under the Greenwood Tree" "in cloth as issued."

My love for book-collecting and my love for London have gone hand in hand. From the first, London with its wealth of literary and historic interest has held me; there has never been a time, not even on that gloomy December day twenty years ago, when, with injuries subsequently diagnosed as a "compound comminuted tibia and fibula," I was picked out of an overturned cab and taken to St. Bartholomew's Hospital for repairs, that I could not say with Boswell, "There is a city called London for which I have as violent an affection as the most romantic lover ever had for his mistress.'

The book-shops of London have been the subject of many a song in prose and verse. Every taste and pocket can be satisfied. I have ransacked the wretched little shops to be found in the by-streets of Holborn one day, and the next have browsed in the artificially stimulated pastures of Grafton Street and Bond Street, and with as much delight in one as in the other.

I cannot say that "I was 'broke' in London in the fall of '89," for the simple reason that I was not in

size.

grandfather,

at all. The smaller.

7

ghis

que

3

be called a small schner clock: in other words it maay was a watch as to shape & intention, & a small clock as to This instrument, being several years older than Oaks had the peachant of going wither too fast or not it's hands, too, occasionally slipped roud on the purot, & thus, though the muutes were told with the greatest. precision, nobody could be quite certain hour they belonged to. The of stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by apais immediately, thumps & shakes, whe it alwayment on she escaped any wil consequences from the other two defects by constant comparisons will & observations of the sun & stars, & by pressing his face close to the glass of his neights winding when passing by their houses, titt he could discem the hour marked by the green-faced timcheepers within.. It may omentioned that Ock's fob, being painfully difficult of access of its comerbet high situation in the waisthand of his trousers (which also lay at a remote haght under his waistcoat) Me watch was as a

reason

Ga merel mass of wrinkles

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recessity pulled out throwing the body extremel to one side, compressing mouth & face, on on account the vertion refined, & drawing op he watch by ti chain, whe a bucket from a well. But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking qh pilas on a certam December morning Summy, & exceptionally mild - might have regarded to

across one

Gabriel Oak

FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF HARDY'S "FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD," MUCH REDUCED IN SIZE

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"The extensive literature of catalogues is probably little known to most readers. I do not pretend to claim a thorough acquaintance with it but I know the luxury of reading good catalogues and such are those of Bernard Quaritch.". - OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX

TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

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