[...] For several reasons I find myself induced to carry through a project planned but since set aside, that is the publication of three of my operatic poems [The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin] with a full introduction.
A rather big piece of literary work of mine, which will soon be published by J. J. Weber under the title Opera and Drama, describes to those interested in my art a tendency which I have come to adopt through that same art, but which I am now for the first time consciously pursuing.
Since many able critical minds have been busied about me lately, chiefly owing to Lohengrin, I now feel the necessity of explaining to my friends the apparent contradiction between those works and my most recent opinions. I can think of nothing more suitable for this purpose than a definitive edition of the poems of my three last operas, by means of which I can best make plain my meaning on the subject of my development as a dramatic composer. As the highlight would thereby fall on Lohengrin, it would perhaps be not unserviceable, even from the point of view of success to your enterprise in publishing the music of the same, if from another aspect—that of the written word—attention were to be drawn to this music. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 204