ABSTRACT
One of the richest items of correspondence preserved by Henry Clark Barlow among his Dante papers are the letters of Seymour Stocker Kirkup, comprising not far short of fifty missives written between 1847 and 1870. Even without the complementary Barlow letters, which apart from a draft of the first were all dispersed, they amply document a relationship of some significance as one of the main Anglo-Italian strands in the intricate international web of nineteenth-century Dante studies. The two men each enjoyed a position of esteem in their respective spheres: Kirkup as the acknowledged doyen of the English colony in Florence, Barlow as Dante correspondent of The Athenaeum for some twenty years. Kirkup himself claimed to be incapable of writing for the press and his opinion of him, as given to Barlow, shows just how long it took the erstwhile Wunderkind to live down his celebrity as an incomparable, but mere, linguist.
