The Mary Hamilton Papers : Transcripts of verse and prose (1784)

Montagu (née Robinson), Elizabeth, Delany (née Granville, formerly Pendarves), Mary, Delany, Patrick, Vesey (née Vesey, later Handcock), Elizabeth, Johnson, Samuel, Forbes, John, Bowdler, Jane, Walpole, Horace, 4th Earl of Orford, Swift, Jonathan, Glover, Richard, Jenner, Charles

The Mary Hamilton Papers

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Manuscript anthology containing copies, mostly in Mary Hamilton's hand, of numerous poems, prose pieces and letters by various writers and friends, including Elizabeth Montagu (see <a target='_blank' class='externalLink uom-purple' href='https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/manchesteruniversity/data/gb133-ham/ham/1/6/4'>HAM/1/6/4</a>), Mary Delany (see <a target='_blank' class='externalLink uom-purple' href='https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/manchesteruniversity/data/gb133-ham/ham/1/6/3'>HAM/1/6/3</a>) and Elizabeth Vesey (see <a target='_blank' class='externalLink uom-purple' href='https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/manchesteruniversity/data/gb133-ham/ham/1/6/2'>HAM/1/6/2</a>). See p.1 under 'Transcription' for a detailed inventory of the whole volume, with page ranges.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The contents include: ‘Dialogue by Mrs Montagu: Berenice & Cleopatra’; ‘The Catalogue’ by Mrs Delany, beginning ‘What a task you have set me my Dear! why tis enough | to tire ten Turks | To give an exact Catalogue of all the Duchess Dowager | of Portland’s works...’; ‘On a Sprinkler’ by Admiral Forbes, beginning ‘Stand by there – Saltcellars – give place, | Behold with what superior Grace | The sprinkler now his Entrée makes | To claim his Right o’er butter’d Cakes...’; a prose piece and verses written by Mrs Delany at the age of 82 (‘The time is Come – I can no more, | The Vegetable World explore, | No more with rapture cull each flow’r | That paints the mead, or twines the Bow’r...’); Dr Johnson’s ‘Verses upon the Death of Dr Levett’, February 1783; ‘Poem upon Mr Gerrard’, written by Richard Glover at the age of 16; ‘April’ by Charles Jenner; ‘A Tale transcribed from an Old Manuscript’; ‘An Elegy to the Memory of David Garrick Esq By the Honble Charles Feilding’; ‘On the Death of Mr Garrick by Miss Bowdler of Bath’; ‘A fragment given to me by Mrs Vesey’; copies of poems given to Hamilton by Lord Monboddo; and copies of a few letters by Elizabeth Montagu, Horace Walpole, Jonathan Swift (to Dr and Mrs Delany) and Elizabeth Vesey. There is also a card written by Horace Walpole inviting a number of people to Strawberry Hill.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Some entries bear a note by Hamilton recording their source and the date. Some passages have been crossed through and two pages excised.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Mary Hamilton's ownership inscription appears on upper and lower pastedowns.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The images on pp.183-189 (a series of extracts begun from the opposite end of the bound volume) appear upside down but can be rotated in the viewer.</p>