Autograph Letter Signed ('S Southwick') from the printer and editor of the 'Albany Register' Solomon Southwick the younger to Erastus Corning, describing recent unsuccessful ventures, and planned educational publications.

3pp., folio. Bifolium. Fair, on aged paper with slight wear to edges. Southwick apologises for not repaying a loan from Corning, giving as a reason the lack of success of his book 'A Layman's Apology': 'I have not to this day, except paying the Printers out of the subscription, received one hundred dollars.' His lecture receipts from 'the Western district' have also been disappointing, 'for I met with so much opposition in some quarters, that it nullified, as it were, my success in others; so that all I accomplished, was to keep my head above water, excepting, that amid much embarrassment, and many privations, I have at last brought to perfection, or rather completion, an entire system of Self Education, of the utmost importance to the rising generation'. He has been told by 'Messrs. Carey and Lee, of Philadelphia, that so soon as there shall be a favourable change in our monied concerns they will purchase the Copy Right of my Lectures on Self Education - The Harpers promise the same as to my Course of Bible Lectures'. In a postscript Southwick boasts of 'more string to my bow - my son succeeds in establishing my Family Newspaper - for on his means, and industry as a Printer, it entirely relies for its publication [...] You may judge of his merit, when I assure you that he saved out of his hard-earnings, as a Journeyman Printer three years, enough to enable him to purchase & pay for half the Printing-Office of Messrs. Skinner & Co:'.