MANUSCRIPT: AC. Pencil.

PUBLICATION: L (1894) 416; LL 341; L (1931) 406.

This letter was written in response to the letter following, from Thomas Niles, dated 13 March 1883. His letter was soon followed by a copy of Mathilde Blind's Life of George Eliot, published by Robert Brothers on 17 March. The poems ED enclosed were "Further in Summer than the Birds" (incorporated in the letter preceding the signature), and "It sifts from Leaden Sieves" (separately enclosed). This letter exchange was probably initiated by ED in a letter (now missing) to Niles inquiring - as she had done a year before - whether Cross's Life of George Eliot was in progress.