Jane Baillie Welsh (later Carlyle) | Autograph manuscript play, " the Rival Brothers", 1814-15

Jane Baillie Welsh (later Carlyle)

Autograph manuscript play entitled "The Rival Brothers a Tragedy in Five Acts",

written by her when 14 years old, fair copy with a few scattered corrections, 48 pages, plus blanks, folio, 1814-15 (paper watermarked 1814), original paper wrappers, paper torn and fragile with some loss, crude repairs notably to title, modern paper cover to wrappers

[with, loosely inserted:] Charles Terrot, minister at Haddington, autograph letter signed, to "My Dear Sir" (presumably John Welsh), returning the play and praising its author's skill, 2 pages, 4to, n.d.

"...I have read over the Rival Brothers—and with more real enjoyment than any regular tragedy has given me of late. I am not going to flatter you with talk about the promises of genius which it affords, tho’ I must say that for a girl of fourteen it seems a very curious affair: but my interest was arrested by other causes. To me it was as if I had been surveying on the mountain-tops the sources of some clear and smiling stream along whose banks I had often lingered with delight before unknown to me—whose widening, more majestic course I hoped yet to follow till the great Ocean should receive us both. For some such reasons I suppose it is that I like the little tragedy, and must ask you to let me keep it till you want it for some better purpose..." (Thomas Carlyle to Jane Welsh, 18 February 1823)

THE HITHERTO LOST MANUSCRIPT CONTAINING THE FULL TEXT OF JANE WELSH CARLYLE'S NOTABLE PIECE OF JUVENILIA. This play is striking evidence of Jane Welsh's literary precocity: it was written when she was 15, by which time she had already completed a novel (now lost). As a girl growing up in Haddington, East Lothian, she was determined to not to allow her sex to limit her education: in addition to learning the Classics, this play shows her to have developed a close knowledge of Elizabethan drama. 

Only a fragment of the text of the play has been published from a partial copy made by Jane in 1824 and now in the National Library of Scotland (NLS, Acc. 4463). 

PROVENANCE:

Thomas Carlyle; Alexander Carlyle (1843-1931) and Mary Carlyle Aitken (1848-95); thence by direct descent