Fifty Years’ Recollections, Literary and Personal
“Mr. Beckford
thanks Mr. Redding for the catalogue
(book-learned and curious), but ten times more for ‘Gabrielle,’ which so vividly
recalls the Alps to his imagination.
“Mr. Beckford
will feel much pleasure in looking over this fervid and most impressive little
poem with its author, any morning (between twelve and two) that might happen to
suit Mr. Redding’s convenience.
“Lansdowne, Sept. 16,
1835.”
William Thomas Beckford (1760-1844)
English novelist and aesthete, son of the Jamaica planter and Lord Mayor William Beckford
(1709-1770), author of
Vathek: An Arabian Tale, surreptitiously
translated and published in 1786. He was MP for Wells (1784-90) and Hindon (1790-94,
1806-20).
Cyrus Redding (1785-1870)
English journalist; he was a founding member of the Plymouth Institute, edited
Galignani's Messenger from 1815-18, and was the effective editor of
the
New Monthly Magazine (1821-30) and
The
Metropolitan (1831-33).