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Notes
Some important acknowledgements: to the Trustees of Dove Cottage, especially Miss Darbishire, for encouragement and for permission to use and publish manuscript material; to Professor J. R. MacGillivray who has generously helped my attempts to read and understand many Wordsworth manuscripts; to Dr. D. V. Erdman who allowed me the use of his list of Wordsworth poems in the Courier, checked files of that newspaper not available to me and made most helpful suggestions; to Professor Beatrice Corrigan who discussed with me Wordsworth's Italian translations.
The missing copies are for: Feb. 27, March 16, May 19, June 1, August 15, Sept. 12, 13, 14, 1797; Oct. 20, Nov. 7, 23, Dec. 7, 1798.
In the same letter Wordsworth goes on to say: "By the bye, I ought to except two sonnets and a light Poem, not connected with my works, which were printed in some Provincial Journal." Presumably the "light Poem" is "Address to the Ocean", published in the Weekly Entertainer, November 21, 1796, discovered by J. R. Mac-Gillivray (see "An Early Poem and Letter by Wordsworth", Review of English Studies, V [1954], 62-66). The two sonnets are not known.
Besides her own name her signatures included: "M.R.", "Tabitha Bramble", "Tabitha", "T.B.", "T.", "Laura Maria", "L.M.", "Sappho", "Bridget", "Oberon", "Julia", "Lesbia". Seven sections from the long blank verse poem, "The Progress of Liberty", appeared anonymously between April 7 and August 2, 1798. Some dozen fictitious letters under the heading, "The Sylphid", (Mrs. Robinson's only known prose contributions) were published between October, 1799 and February, 1800. Mrs. Robinson revised these before her death and they were reprinted with her Memoirs in 1801.
Published February 23 and March 22. Mr. D. V. Erdman has discussed these essays in his article: "The Signature of Style", Bulletin of the New York Public Library, LXIII [1959], 104-109.
Stuart, in an article superscribed "May 4", but published in the Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1838 (p. 577), entitled "The Newspaper Writings of the Poet Coleridge", made the following statement: "Wordsworth contributed some political sonnets, without pecuniary reward; but he never wrote a line of prose for the Morning Post." Almost certainly this was added by Stuart after he had received Wordsworth's letter of May 17 (see above).
From a MS, in the Langlais Collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library and quoted by kind permission of the Trustees.
Southey's newspaper contributions were generally unsigned; "Walter" was used only on Jan. 16, Feb. 12 (incidentally against a poem called "Inscription for a column in Smithfield where Wat Tyler was killed"), Feb. 20, Feb. 22, Feb. 27; in the second half of 1799, on Sept. 13, Oct. 2, 7, Nov. 7, Southey signed himself "Abel Shufflebottom". He had determined on "Walter" as early as July 16, 1797 when he wrote to his brother Tom : "Unluckily, now my name is established, I must have done with it; for to publish whilst studying law would materially injure me. So I assume the name of Walter Tyler, in honour of my good old uncle, an ancestor of whom I am very proud, and with reason." (Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, ed. J. W. Warter, I, 39-40.)
These men knew either Osorio or The Borderers (often both), and most of them probably knew MP.: Thelwall, Lloyd, Sheridan and Poole had each sent in a contribution in 1798; Wrangham presumably read the newspaper (see entry for March 8, 1798).
Perhaps in this signature Coleridge also remembered Sterne's delicious footnote to Book VI, Chapter II of Tristram Shandy, and thus suggested that the poem was originally a piece of juvenilia (presumably Wordsworth's).
Some signatures seem to introduce a deliberate note of confusion. "W. L. D.", for instance, habitually associated with Wordsworth's political sonnets of 1803, and interpreted by Hutchinson, "Wordsworth Libertati Dedicavit", appears in The Weekly Entertainer for December 21, 1795, with the one-time Wordsworthian address, "St. John's College", and a very unWordsworthian poem entitled "On Classick Learning". "Mortimer" signed "A Letter on Agriculture" in the Monthly Magazine, October, 1796 (p.691). "M. H.", the signature of the introductory puff to "The Solitude of Binnorie" (MP., October 14,1800), had frequently initialled Mary Hay's articles in the Monthly Magazine, 1797; indeed, on one occasion (February), it had appeared beneath a puff introducing five poems by the "late Mr. Brooke". One wonders whether some confusion was intended. It is worth remembering that "W. W." was used other than by Wordsworth and that "Rusticus" did not always mean Poole.
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