Autograph Letter Signed ('M Berry') from Horace Walpole's friend Miss Mary Berry to the politician and wit Richard 'Conversation' Sharp, commenting on his volume of 'Epistles in Verse'.

Author: 
Mary Berry ['Miss Berry'] (1763-1852), author and diarist; sister and companion of Agnes Berry (1764-1852), friend of Horace Walpole [Richard 'Conversation' Sharp (1759-1835), politician and wit]
Mary Berry ['Miss Berry']
Publication details: 
7 April 1828; Petersham.
£230.00
SKU: 11160

12mo, 4 pp. Bifolium. Good, on lightly-aged paper. Her 'constant practice' has always been to return her thanks for the gift of a poetry volume 'before I could possibly have had time to read it', but in this case 'this caution was impossible for I received your little Vol: in all the hurry of leaving town, & I may say England, for I shall not return to London before our departure'. She is glad she was not able to write before reading the poems 'with the attention they merit & with all the pleasure they have given me'. She is 'conscious of a most prosaic head, & was hardly ever guilty of a

even in my youngest days'. She praises several poems as speaking 'to the heart & understanding have either to be spoken to'. His 'accents' are 'always unaffected, & generally both forcible & harmonious'. She describes a 'notice' of his as 'an idea on which my mind had often dwelt', and quotes one line of verse approvingly. She will soon offer him 'a Vol: of dull Prose, which (you will believe me when I say) I heartily wish was better for your sake'. She ends by expressing the hope that she and her sister may see him at Petersham before they leave at the end of the month. Sharp's 'Epistles in Verse' was published anonymously by John Murray in London in 1828.