[ Aubrey de Vere, Irish poet. ] Autograph Letter Signed ('Aubrey de Vere') [ to Samuel Waddington ], giving permission to publish sonnets by him in an anthology, and commenting on Hartley Coleridge, William Wordsworth and Sir Aubrey de Vere.
3pp., 16mo. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged, with traces of stub adhering to blank reverse of sevond leaf. He is 'very much flattered' at Waddington's 'wishing to include sonnets of mine in your proposed selection. You are quite welcome to those you have named, or any others of mine.' He hopes he will 'include some of Hartley Coleridge's beautiful sonnets', and asks him to accept 'a vol. of sonnets by my Father, the late Sir Aubrey de Vere. Wordsworth spoke of his sonnets (my Father's) as the best modern sonnets he was acquainted with'. He ends in the realisation that Hartley Coleridge's sonnets are debarred, as he is dead. Waddington's 'English Sonnets by Living Writers' was published in London by George Bell and Sons in 1881. De Vere's poetry was admired by W. B. Yeats, who wrote, in his 'Book of Irish Verse' (1895, rev. 1900) that De Vere's 'few but ever memorable successes are enchanted islands in gray seas of stately impersonal reverie and description, which drift by and leave no definite recollection. One needs, perhaps, to perfectly enjoy him, a Dominican habit, a cloister, and a breviary.'