Lot 79: MOORE, THOMAS.

A SERIES OF ELEVEN AUTOGRAPH LETTERS SIGNED, TO REV. FRANCIS HODGSON
principally discussing their mutual friend Lord Byron, including his life after his departure from England ("...I have had four or five letters from Lord Byron within these two months past - He is now at Venice, and speaks much & warmly in his letters about you..."), a report on his forthcoming work Manfred ("...It is wilder than his wildest..."), and in later letters discussing at length his editorial work on Byron's letters and journals with particular reference to letters lent by Hodgson, concerns over which parts should be printed ("...you take too fastidious a view of Byron's letters...") and especially references to Byron's loan to Hodgson, also discussing the success of Moore's Lalla Rookh, mutual friends and acquaintances, and family news including his daughter's illness, in total 18 pages, 4to and 8vo, 6 March 1817 to 13 November 1828, paper tears leaving two letters incomplete, in one case with significant passages missing

Not in The Letters of Thomas Moore, ed. W.S. Dowden, 2 vols, 1964

The Rev. Canon. Hodgson, sale in these rooms, 2 March 1885, lot 7

"...the parts marked for omission are sometimes such as no eye ought to read but my own..." Moore's construction of Byron's posthumous reputation. A recurring subject is the substantial loan that Hodgson received from Byron in 1813, which enabled him to marry, and which - at Byron's apparent insistence ? was never repaid. Moore tried unsuccessfully to overcome Hodgson's reluctance that the details of the transaction should be revealed: "To acknowledge a great pecuniary obligation & yet shrink from stating the details of it... neither obviates the false views that vulgar people might take of such a transaction nor satisfies what, I think, all persons of a generous nature will require at your hands".