'The best letters I've ever read!': Rediscovering / Re-editing T E Brown

In 1896, the poet T. E. Brown (1830-1897) described to his friend S. T. Irwin how he had had to endure a very rough ten-hour crossing from Liverpool to the Isle of Man. What sustained him through the journey was reading the Letters of Edward Fitzgerald (the ‘Omar Khayyam’ poet, whose letters were published in 1894). ‘I had a hard time of it, much alleviated, though, by Fitz, whom I read as long as daylight lasted . . . Blessings on Fitzgerald! How delightful he was! How he comforted me!’ Brown’s references to ‘delight’ and ‘comfort’ indicate an attitude to literary letters which is more aesthetic than biographical in orientation. That this was a prevailing taste, at least among Brown’s circle, is suggested by what happened when Brown himself died the following year. His influential
friends who had greatly admired his letters immediately started making arrangements to have them published; and Irwin, as the appointed editor, seems to have taken the 1894 edition of Fitzgerald’s letters as a model. In his two-volume Letters of Thomas Edward Brown (1900) Irwin drastically cut
many of the letters so that memorable passages of description or literary criticism were presented in isolation, with minimal notes or information about context. The intention was clearly to showcase Brown’s character, wisdom and erudition, rather than provide material for future biographers or
editors.

In this paper I will introduce T. E. Brown, and outline some of the problems that Irwin’s 1900 edition, which has never been superseded, presents for 21st century approaches to his writings. I will then go on to focus on the large collection of over 100 unpublished letters from Brown to the highly successful popular novelist Hall Caine (1853-1931), which are completely absent from Irwin because
Caine refused access, but which can now be seen to be particularly interesting for the insights they give into Brown’s complex relationship with the younger writer and his efforts to influence him through his letters.