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Joseph Haydn: London Notebooks
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A valuable primary source is The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks of Joseph Haydn, edited by H. C. Robbins London (1959). The most important early biographies of Haydn are those by G.A. Griesinger (1809) and A.C. Dies (1810), both based on interviews with Haydn in his last years and available in English translation by Vernon Gotwals, Joseph Haydn: Eighteenth-Century Gentleman and Genius (1963). Modern biographies include K. Geiringer, Haydn: A Creative Life in Music (1946; 2d rev. ed. 1963), and Rosemary Hughes, Haydn (1950). Major studies in English on sectors of Haydn's work are few.
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When the prince for whom Haydn had served most of his career died, Haydn saw it as yet another opportunity. He packed his bags and traveled to London where he was employed by the entrepreneur J.P Salomon to compose symphonies. The demand for new music was incredible. Even at the age of sixty, Haydn's stamina was unquenchable and he produced perhaps his greatest work. Of these are the famous "London Symphonies."
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Oh… as to why Haydn was not fond of opening letters from his wife; here’s an anecdote from Haydn’s biography in Grove’s, dating from the time of his first triumphant tour of London. "During his absence his wife (earlier described in the article as; "a regular Xanthippe, who, as her husband said, cared not a straw whether he was an artist or a shoemaker") had had the offer of a small house and garden in the suburbs of Vienna, and she wrote asking him to send her the money for it, as it would be just the house for her when she became a widow! He did not send the money, but on his return to Vienna bought it, added a story and lived there from Jan. 1797 till his death."
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 During this latter visit, musicologists opine, Haydn composed the three keyboard trios identified in the Hoboken catalog as XV: 27 to 29. He dedicated them to his friend Therese Jansen, whom Haydn listed in his first London notebook as one of the important keyboardists. (Haydn served as a witness at her wedding to the art dealer Gaetano Bartolozzi in May, 1795.) She submitted the trios for publication to Longman & Broderip and in 1797 L. & B. advertised the first edition.
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Haydn composed nearly fifty keyboard sonatas, the earlier intended for harpsichord and the last for the newly developed hammer-action fortepiano. The final works in this form include the so-called English Sonata in C major, written in 1795 during Haydn's second visit to London.
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When Haydn was 58, Solomon proposed to take Haydn to London. All the rest of Haydn's friends said no, because he was too old. But Haydn didn't think so, so he went anyway.
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London Notebooks