Letter: To Charles Baxter, 1st January ’94

MY DEAR CHARLES, - I am delighted with your idea, and first, I will here give an amended plan and afterwards give you a note of some of the difficulties.

[Plan of the Edinburgh edition - 14 vols.]

. . . It may be a question whether my TIMES letters might not be appended to the ’Footnote’ with a note of the dates of discharge of Cedercrantz and Pilsach.

I am particularly pleased with this idea of yours, because I am come to a dead stop. I never can remember how bad I have been before, but at any rate I am bad enough just now, I mean as to literature; in health I am well and strong. I take it I shall be six months before I’m heard of again, and this time I could put in to some advantage in revising the text and (if it were thought desirable) writing prefaces. I do not know how many of them might be thought desirable. I have written a paper on TREASURE ISLAND, which is to appear shortly. MASTER OF BALLANTRAE - I have one drafted. THE WRECKER is quite sufficiently done already with the last chapter, but I suppose an historic introduction to DAVID BALFOUR is quite unavoidable. PRINCE OTTO I don’t think I could say anything about, and BLACK ARROW don’t want to. But it is probable I could say something to the volume of TRAVELS. In the verse business I can do just what I like better than anything else, and extend UNDERWOODS with a lot of unpublished stuff. APROPOS, if I were to get printed off a very few poems which are somewhat too intimate for the public, could you get them run up in some luxuous manner, so that fools might be induced to buy them in just a sufficient quantity to pay expenses and the thing remain still in a manner private? We could supply photographs of the illustrations - and the poems are of Vailima and the family - I should much like to get this done as a surprise for Fanny.

R. L. S.