An Original Handwritten Letter and A Signed Note by Poet Horatio Smith to His Father. Dated 1844. Horatio Smith 1779–1849. He was an acquaintance and friendly rival of Percy Bysshe Shelley and, as a successful stockbroker, helped to manage Shelley’s finances. Smith offers some advice to the father of a would-be novelist on March 8 1844: My dear Sir, I have looked over the historical novel with much pleasure. The time seems well chosen, it is full of incident and the descriptions are graphic, so that I should say it might have been published with advantage a few years ago, but whether it can be brought out now with the same probability of success I should be inclined to doubt for the supply of these productions has so much exceeded the demand that the publishers have become exceedingly shy of them. Should you wish to try Mr Colburn, I enclose you a letter of introduction to him. If you send up your daughter’s manuscript, he will submit it to some of his readers and give you an answer after a little delay. I should recommend the omission of the Masque – and some of the poetry wants correcting. With the best wishes for the success of the Tales of the War of the Roses, I am