Unpublished Letters of Charles Sealsfield

Extract

Of the forty-three letters of Sealsfield here presented, twenty-five appear now for the first time. The remaining eighteen have already been published, but either in abridged form, or deviating greatly from an exact reproduction of the originals. The letters altogether include: I. Twenty to Frl. Elise Meyer; II. Five to Frl. Marie Meyer; III. Eighteen to Hrn. Heinrich Erhard. The earliest of these letters is dated September 1841; the greater number, however, were written after the author was already past the prime of life. Old age naturally intensifies human weaknesses, but like the setting sun, it also illumines the horizon of the past. Thus these letters written during our author's last years, illustrate something more than the eccentricities of an old man. Sealsfield's literary and social judgments, however carelessly thrown out,—his whole personality in fact,—concern not only the few who have devoted themselves to the study of Sealsfield, or who cherish his memory, but are calculated to interest as well that larger class in both hemispheres which still represents the extinct “citizen of the world,” the cosmopolitan who had learned to look beyond the fashions of his own time and country in politics and literature. In Sealsfield's home the memory of “Oesterreich's grösster Romanendichter” has recently been revived by the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of our author's birth. It is hoped that the present publication may be not unwelcome, as following opportunely in the wake of that event. Appended to these letters will be found a synopsis of the principal events of Seals-field's life, arranged in chronological order.