The letters of Richard Cumberland
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The letters of Richard Cumberland
(AMS studies in the eighteenth century, no. 13)
AMS Press, c1988
- Uniform Title
-
Correspondence
Available at 24 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Bibliography: p. lviii-lxiii
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Richard Cumberland (1732-1811) is best remembered for "The West Indian" (1771) and "The Jew" (1794). He knew great persons in government and in literature, if not well, at least familiarly. The 224 letters collected here stretch from 1764 to 1811, and though many of them are neither literary nor theatrical, they may make informative reading. As a whole they may constitute a valuable source for historians of all sorts. There is information about Colonial administration, place-getting, and sale of posts, as well as about negotiations with dubious theatre managers and coping with recalcitrant or irresponsible actors. There has been no previous edition of Cumberland's letters. Dircks has collected MSS from 15 libraries, ranging from Harvard, Yale, and the British Library to the British Science Museum and the Sheffield City Library. To these he has added letters preserved only in four printed sources - eg Boaden and William Mudford's hostile account of Cumberland, published in 1812. The Garrick part of the correspondence is familiar, but most of the rest will not be, even to specialists.
Cumberland's many topical and personal allusions are clearly annotated, making this edition easy to use. Cumberland's hand presents few difficulties, and Dircks has adopted a straightforward old-spelling textual policy.
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