Item #301674 Autograph Letter Signed (“George Meredith”), to George Gissing, thanking him for “the delightful book on The Ionian Sea" George Meredith.

Meredith to Gissing: ‘for you to take your place among our best’

Autograph Letter Signed (“George Meredith”), to George Gissing, thanking him for “the delightful book on The Ionian Sea"

Box Hill, Dorking, [Surrey]: 21 November 1901.

Price: $2,000.00


About the item

4 pp., pen and ink on laid paper, watermarked Joynson Superfine, headed Box Hill, Dorking. 1 vols. Small 8vo. Meredith to Gissing: ‘for you to take your place among our best’. Fine. Provenance: Gabrielle Fleury to Robert Le Mallier; Sotheby’s (23 Nov. 1971), lot 700 (cited in Gissing Newsletter 8:1, Jan. 1972); Sotheby Parke Bernet (London), 23 July 1979, lot 256, to Al Slotnick.

Item #301674

Novelist George Meredith (1828-1909) writes his friend George Gissing (1857-1903), acknowledging his latest book, and asking about Gissing‘s health, reading (in part):

“The title of your present abode indicates the open air cure. Let me know, if you can find time, how it affects you, & whether you are strengthened to work, as I trust you are, for a clear way is open to you now, & only the fair state of health is wanted for you to take your place among our best.”

A touching solicitous letter from the great elder author, himself no stranger to controversy, to the ill-starred but critically acclaimed Gissing.