Autograph letter signed Prime Minister Edward Stanley-Smith Earl of Derby 1863

SMITH-STANLEY, Edward Geoffrey, 14th Earl of Derby (1799-1869). Autograph letter signed to Sir Francis Bond Head, discussing Kinglake's history of the Crimean War. 17 May 1863.
 
Autograph letter signed "Derby", written from St James's Square on Derby's embossed monogrammed paper. Single sheet folded, written on the first two sides, 180 x 115 mm. Addressed by Derby at the conclusion to "Sir F. B. Head Bart." Old folds, a few light marks to the final blank side. A later collector has added a pencil note to the third side identifying the subject as Kinglake's book on the Crimean War and his father, Sir Francis Head's pamphlet upon it. Very good.
 
Derby thanks Sir Francis Bond Head for sending him a copy of his newly published pamphlet attacking Alexander William Kinglake's account of the Crimean War. He describes Head's criticism as "very severe, but less, much less so than is abundantly merited", before offering his own dismissive assessment of Kinglake's work. Derby acknowledges that the author's distinctive style and access to important source material had initially secured the book considerable public favour, but suggests that closer examination had damaged rather than enhanced its reputation, concluding that he greatly doubted whether a third volume would ever appear.
 
Head's pamphlet, Mr. Kinglake and His History of the Origin and Progress of the War in the Crimea, was published in 1863 in response to the first two volumes of Kinglake's The Invasion of the Crimea. A soldier, colonial administrator and author, Head had taken a close interest in the conduct and subsequent historical interpretation of the war. Derby's letter is more than a routine acknowledgement, containing a candid judgment upon one of the most ambitious historical works produced from the conflict. His prediction proved spectacularly wrong: Kinglake eventually completed the history in eight volumes.