ABSTRACT
Miss В was indeed much disappointed at the long postponement of her little miscellaney, and would not willingly let another season slip past her so unexpectedly - but she is still very decided as to the form of publication - namely one Voi with the whole of the poeti cal pieces as now arranged - and the miscellaneous prose pieces - Reserving the Chapters on Churchyards, with some others in M. S. for a separate Voi to be published either at the same time with the first, or later - If Mr W Blackwood is still disinclined to this mode of publication, Miss Bowles will not of course press it on him, but will be obliged to him for a definitive answer, that she may arrange accordingly. (NLS 4015, ff. 231-2)
She resisted his wish to include any of her popular ‘Chapters on Church yards’, having enough of them on their own, as she says, to bury a whole parish, and wanting therefore to reserve them for a separate publication. She certainly won on the selection, as the two prose pieces he had wanted to exclude as ‘least akin to the others’ are in fact included. One on ‘Beauty’ the other ‘Thoughts on letter writing’ (see Appendix 1, pp. 250 and 245), are actually two of her most pungent and quirky satires, though both written in what he would probably have thought rather doubtful taste.
