Autograph Letter Signed ('Thos. H. Lacy') by the theatrical publisher Thomas Hailes Lacy, giving his reasons for abandoning an edition of the works of Thomas Heywood in favour of the unnamed recipient [John Payne Collier?].

4pp., 12mo. Very good, on lightly-aged paper. Lacy begins by thanking the recipient for 'the kindly spirit that animates your favor received to day. '[A]t once and without Recitation' he states his 'extreme willingness to abandon the continuation of Heywood' in the recipient's favour. He will 'rejoice in any slight influence I can exert towards a guarantee to induce you to persevere'. Lacy's only wish is for 'the plays to be completed', and the recipient 'could certainly advance irresistible claims to a far greater amount of support than any one else'. Lacy spends the next two pages warning about the perils of publication: 'you must fully calculate that your expenditure upon each play of 90 pages (which would I think be the average) must inevitably be 25 pounds for 500 copies, I doubt if you could get them done so cheaply but I could'. Regarding the 'casual sale', he gives the example of 'Mr. Leonard preparing "Hoffman" for the press, it was advertised and favorably noticed in the principal organs of literature, and one might have anticipated some curiosity to investigate the treatment pursued in such a bad case of ancient editorship - the sale in England Ireland and Scotland not forgetting the principality of Wales and our Town of Berwick upon Tweed, Jersey Guernsey and Sark Australia India and two or three other small Islands, the United States &c was 8 copies! that demand was under the pressure of publicity[.] Since, not one has been sold!' As for the modern drama, 'a recent five act play in blank verse' sold one copy. The final page carries a supplement, dated 20 April, in which Lacy states that 'after the two days that have elapsed' he is 'more and more confirmed in my opinion that you should continue the work, and I therefore (if there is a chance of your undertaking it[)] resign it into your hands'. In a postscript he asks to be allowed to 'subscribe to any future work of yours (not as a bookseller which I have only been 5 years) but as one of the public'. From 1841 to 1853 Collier had edited Heywood's 'Dramatic Works' in various Shakespeare Society volumes.