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George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]. Autograph letter signed ("ME Lewes") to Oscar Browning. Regents Park, 21 November 1867....
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Description
George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]. Autograph letter signed ("ME Lewes") to Oscar Browning. Regents Park, 21 November 1867.4 pages, 12mo (153 x 99 mm), on a bifolium. Written in dark brown ink on printed stationery of The Priory, 21 North Bank, Regents Park. Docketed in an unknown contemporary hand "Lewes" inverted on lower margin of final page.
A very good letter to her eventual biographer, Oscar Browning, discussing the philosophy of education and acknowledging receipt of an unidentified volume of poetry which "came last night... I have already dipped into [the poems] with pleasant result. 'Mimnermus in Church' [by William Johnson Cory] I like especially. If Time were more elastic, or if I were strong enough to stretch it more, I should like to write you a long letter... But I must just emphasize my hatred, in common with yours, of negative destructive teaching given to the young. Superstition, of almost any sort, is better, & has more moral truth in it, than an attitude of contemptuous superiority to the hard-earned experience of other generations. The moral atmosphere, as you imply, is the first second and third requisite-yet I cannot help thinking that higher beliefs may be gradually infused... I am sure that your practice has taught you more than I know of such matters..." Not in Letters, ed. by Gordon S. Haight (New Haven, 1955).
Oscar Browning, was a writer and educational reformer, and at that time a master at Eton College. He edited an edition of Milton's Tractate on Education, and was also the author of numerous studies on education theory, including An Introduction to the History of Educational Theories (1882), and Aspects of Education: A Study in the History of Pedagogy (1888). Browing had a long friendship with Eliot and wrote an extensive and well-received biography of her, published in 1890.
Condition: Folds, some light toning on letterhead on first page, folds on final page lightly soiled.
Provenance: The Library of a Minnesota Collector.
Auction Info
2025 December 15 Rare Books Signature® Auction #6323 (go to Auction Home page)
Auction Dates
December, 2025
15th
Monday
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