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The Nineteenth Century , No 182, Apr 1892 [‎41r] (86/244)

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The record is made up of 1 volume (120 folios). It was created in Apr 1892. It was written in English. The original is part of the British Library: India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. Records and Private Papers Documents collected in a private capacity. .

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1892 LORD LYTTON'S RANK 571
to live. I think he cared nothing for his fame in public life, though
he was conscious of having done his duty to his country on divers
trying occasions, according to his rather old-fashioned, ideas of
patriotism. But the fate of his books was a vivid and enduring
interest, and perhaps the chief sorrow of his life was the comparative
failure of Glenaveril to take the public fancy.
Glenaveril was his greatest—indeed, a gigantic effort, being a
rhymed novel of some 50,000 lines in eight-lined stanzas, the fruit of
his maturest intellect, and written in the delightful atmosphere of his
happiest home life at Knebworth. On it he had built his hope of
taking a first rank among English poets, and had it been the full success
he hoped for it, the tone of despondency so visible in his later writings
would not in all probability have gained its ascendency over him.
There had been nothing morbid up to this point in his muse, and
Glenaveril itself was pre-eminently healthy. Unfortunately, the poem
had peculiarities of form and circumstance which damned it with the
general public. It was inordinately long, and was made to appear
longer by the unfortunate experiment of bringing it out in monthly
parts. The plot was a very intricate one, far too intricate in my
opinion for a poem, and the public could not carry its attention from
one number to another, so that the later volumes, which were the best,
were hardly read at all. The poem, too, contained political digressions
which, good though they were as such, were unnecessary for the story's
development, and raised against its author the bitterness of party
feeling, and party feeling is unsparing and unjust. Thus it failed of
the expected appreciation, and not even his nomination to Paris,
gratifying though it was to him in other ways, could quite console
him for the literary disappointment.
To this I attribute the sadness of all his later poems and a grow
ing weariness of life, which was very evident to his intimate friends.
In politics an ultra-Conservative, and so almost of necessity a
pessimist, he found it difficult to find comfort in the affairs of the
great world he was called to administer. His official ambition had been
satisfied and cloyed with the Viceroyalty of India, where he had spent
his best energies, and his work at Paris, congenial as it was in many
ways, and performed with marked success, never quite absorbed
him.
During the last four years of his life he withdrew more and more
into a world of shadows, where he sought the phantom of his lost
youth and grasped only the realities of age. All men of imagination
go through some such experience, but few have had the courage to
record it, or to leave behind them in any tangible form the history
of its bitterness. Marah is the record of Lord Lytton's last decep
tion in the world of sentiment, and it stands as such almost unique
in English literature. Indeed, I know of nothing which can exactly
be compared with it, for our passionate poets have seldom been long-

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Content

The file contains a copy of the journal The Nineteenth Century. A pencil note on the cover of the journal, in the hand of Lady Pelly, indicates that Lewis Pelly was being read an article from this journal on Easter Sunday five days before he died.

The article he and his wife were reading has been marked on the cover 'Prospects of Marriage for Women, by Miss Clara E Collet' which appears on folios 24-31.

A second annotation, written by Sir William Henry Rhodes Green, gives the date of Lewis Pelly's death and is provided as context to Lady Pelly's comments.

Extent and format
1 volume (120 folios)
Physical characteristics

The journal contains one set of foliation and three sets of original pagination.

The principal foliation for this volume appears in the top right hand corner of the recto The front of a sheet of paper or leaf, often abbreviated to 'r'. of each folio, using a pencil number enclosed with a circle.

The three sets of original printed pagination that appear are as follows:

The advertisments at the front of the journal are paginated as i-xxxii; the articles themselves are paginated as 525-712; and the Sampson Low, Marston & Company publications list at the rear of the journal has been paginated as 1-8.

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English in Latin script
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The Nineteenth Century , No 182, Apr 1892 [‎41r] (86/244), British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, Mss Eur F126/28, in Qatar Digital Library <https://www.qdl.qa/archive/81055/vdc_100023318122.0x000057> [accessed 28 March 2024]

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