JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 6/11 - HFSID 22375

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
Signed Autograph Letter, agreeing to attend a meeting at Exeter Hall but not to participate further
Autograph Letter signed: "J. A. Froude", 2 pages, 4¼x7 (front and verso). Onslow Gardens (London), June 11, n.y. On personal letterhead to "Dear sir", in full: "I shall endeavor to attend the meeting in Exeter Hall to which the Prince of Mantua has kindly sent me a ticket. I cannot however take any part in the proceedings. Entirely unacquainted as I am with the matters of the Fund which is to be so generously applied, the amounts of it and the securities in which it is to be invested. I can not understand why a Fund of such magnitude should have received so little notice from the Press. And I wait with anxiety for the further information which the Prince, as I suppose, intends to give. I remain your faithful servant". English historian James Anthony Froude (1818-1894) had intended to enter the Anglican ministry, but his religious doubts - fully expressed in his controversial novel The Nemesis of Faith (1849) - convinced him to pursue secular scholarship instead. (Reaction to the book also compelled him to resign his fellowship at Oxford.) His History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, completed in 1870, was also controversial, because Froude wrote in a dramatic, polemical style. His biography of friend and fellow historian Thomas Carlyle (1887) caused an even greater uproar, because readers focused on his revelations of troubles in Carlyle's marriage rather than on his praise of his writings. Froude made a speaking tour in the US, but alienated audiences there with his ardent defense of British imperialism and especially of its role in Ireland. Exeter Hall, London (1831-1907), a concert and lecture hall seating 4,000 in its larger auditorium, was the site of many meetings on matters of religion, philanthropy and political reform. Charles O. Groom-Napier (1839-1894), the wealthy and eccentric son of a West Indies sugar planter, began styling himself the Prince of Mantua in the late 1870s. Froude had good reason to be skeptical of any project promoted by this "Prince", who began his books with entirely fabricated favorable reviews from famous persons. Horizontal fold crease. ½" horizontal tear 1" from right edge and 1½" from lower edge - not affecting writing. Corners and edges worn and lightly creased. Soiled and toned.