<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>