Autograph letter signed by feminist poet and writer Mathilde Blind dated 1888

BLIND, Mathilde (1841–1896).

Autograph letter signed to Mrs Dickinson, thanking her for her appreciation. 1 St Edmund’s Terrace, Regent’s Park, London, 6 August 1888.
 
2 pp., 8vo, old file holes in left margin (not affecting text), and a strip of adhesive, in very good condition.
 
A letter from the feminist poet, critic and freethinker Mathilde Blind. Writing to a reader who had contacted her while she was travelling in the South of France, Blind expresses gratitude for the influence her writings have had. She writes appreciatively:
 
“What you say of the effect of my writing on you is not only gratifying but stimulating. It makes one feel that one has not been merely writing ‘words, words, words’ as Hamlet says, but that they have been fraught with a living power to touch and quicken the intellectual life in some of one’s fellow beings.”
 
Blind was a major voice in late-Victorian radical literature, associated with the freethought movement, the New Woman, and the wider circle of Browning and Rossetti. Letters from her are rare.