It's always nice to come across links between different authors - especially if they have societies that belong to the ALS. Recently I was searching for a book on my shelves, and came across another book that I'd forgotten I'd bought - and that was in a pile waiting to be read some day. It was a book of essays and miscellany by John Drinkwater called A Book for Bookmen, published in 1926 by Dulau and Co, London. I had bought this book because John Drinkwater is one of the Dymock Poets, and I'm interested in knowing more about what he was writing after the Dymock years. I decided to interrupt my search for the book I really wanted, and browse in Drinkwater's book for a few minutes.

In the table of contents I spotted a chapter called "Landor's 'Dry Sticks Fagoted.'" Anyone who has read Jean Field's biography of Landor will know that 'Dry Sticks Fagoted' is the title of a volume of Landor's poems published in 1858. Drinkwater's chapter consists of quotes from 38 letters that JD has in his possession from Landor to James Nichol about 'Dry Sticks Faboted' while it was being put together and going through the press (as JD says in his intro). JD numbered the mainly undated letters into an approximate order, quotes from them under each number, and occasionally comments on them, e.g. when Landor recommends a title and title page that says inter alia "by the late W.S. Landor".

There are some amusing aspects, for example when Landor sends the publisher a poem for inclusion that had already appeared in an earlier volume of his, or when Landor tells the publisher to include a poem that he unfortunately does not have a copy of and cannot remember in what periodical it appeared.