
Simon Roberts
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Senior Specialist, Head of Sale
WISE DISCUSSES BROWNING'S ESSAY ON SHELLEY, PROMPTED BY MAJOR BYRON'S FORGERIES: Moxon had published The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, with an Introductory Essay by Robert Browning in 1852, all but two of these being forgeries by Major Byron (see the Major's letter and group of forgeries above). Wise's reprint was issued in 1888, the year before Browning's death.
The recipient of this letter has been identified as the classicist Professor William Rhys Roberts; but seems to us more likely to be Ernest Rhys, quondam Rhymers' Club poet and founder of the Everyman Library. He was author of Browning and His Poetry (1914), and edited a volume of Shelley for Everyman. He is known to have corresponded with Wise (Collins, p. 231).