Diplomatic Text
Among the Ladies whom I am ʃoliciting
to patronize my book,[1] I ought not to forget
the warmhearted & once friendly Miʃs H——
Will ʃhe take the trouble to look into it,
& recommend it to her acquaintances, as con=
=taining ʃome pretty light Summer-reading? --
This she may ʃafely do without danger of
of exposing her own judgment; for the review=
=ing have Critics have pronounced that it's contents
wereare at least entertainging; -- but as I am
partly ashamed of it myself, I would gladly
get the Impreʃsion ʃold off, without advertis=
=ing my Name in the News-papers. --
Being uncertain if I ʃhall be forgiven
for reminding you of a worthleʃs acquaintance,
I shall trouble you no farther with my His=
=tory, than that I remain as poor, as un=
settled, & as much your Wellwiʃher, as when I
was at Northamptonshire
Stockton, 25th- May
1781.
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Normalised Text
Among the Ladies whom I am soliciting
to patronize my book, I ought not to forget
the warmhearted & once friendly Miss Hamilton
Will she take the trouble to look into it,
& recommend it to her acquaintances, as containing
some pretty light Summer-reading? --
This she may safely do without danger
of exposing her own judgement; for the reviewing
Critics have pronounced that it's contents
are at least entertaining; -- but as I am
partly ashamed of it myself, I would gladly
get the Impression sold off, without advertising
my Name in the News-papers. --
Being uncertain if I shall be forgiven
for reminding you of a worthless acquaintance,
I shall trouble you no farther with my History
, than that I remain as poor, as unsettled,
& as much your Wellwisher, as when I
was at N
Stockton, 25th- May
1781.
quotations, spellings, uncorrected forms, split words, abbreviations, formatting)
Notes
Metadata
Library References
Repository: John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester
Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers
Item title: Letter from John Hope to Mary Hamilton
Shelfmark: HAM/1/6/8/4
Correspondence Details
Sender: John Hope
Place sent: Stockton
Addressee: Mary Hamilton
Place received: unknown
Date sent: 25 May 1781
Letter Description
Summary: Letter from John Hope to Mary Hamilton, relating to the patronage of a book Hope has written [probably Thoughts in Prose and Verse Started in his Walks (1780)]. He asks Hamilton to examine the book and to recommend it to her friends and acquaintances ‘as containing some pretty light Summer-reading’ which she may ‘safely do without danger of exposing her own judgement’ as reviews of the work have declared it ‘at Heart entertaining’. Hope notes that he himself is partially ashamed of the work and would ‘gladly get the Impression sold off, without advertising my Name in the Newspapers’.
Hope ends the letter by stating that he will not trouble Hamilton with his history other than to say that he ‘remains as poor, as unsettled, & as much as when I was at Northampton’. [The word ‘Northampton’ has been scribbled out].
Dated at Stockton.
Length: 1 sheet, 139 words
Transliteration Information
Editorial declaration: First edited in the project 'Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers' (Hannah Barker, Sophie Coulombeau, David Denison, Tino Oudesluijs, Cassandra Ulph, Christine Wallis & Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, 2019-2023).
All quotation marks are retained in the text and are represented by appropriate Unicode characters. Words split across two lines may have a hyphen on the first, the second or both fragments (reco-|ver, imperfect|-ly, satisfacti-|-on); or a double hyphen (pur=|port, dan|=ger, qua=|=litys); or none (respect|ing). Any point in abbreviations with superscripted letter(s) is placed last, regardless of relative left-right orientation in the original. Thus, Mrs. or Mrs may occur, but M.rs or Mr.s do not.
Acknowledgements: Transcription and XML version created as part of project 'Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers', funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council under grant AH/S007121/1.
Transliterator: Qiaoshen Hua, undergraduate student, University of Manchester (submitted 20 April 2020)
Cataloguer: Lisa Crawley, Archivist, The John Rylands Library
Cataloguer: John Hodgson, Head of Special Collections, John Rylands Research Institute and Library
Copyright: Transcriptions, notes and TEI/XML © the editors
Revision date: 6 January 2022