Autograph Letter Signed "W. Hone" to an unnamed male correspondent.

Author: 
William Hone, Radical bookseller and publisher (DNB).
Publication details: 
5 Bolt Court, 18 June 1840.
£150.00
SKU: 6736

One page, minor staining not affecting text, laid down on grey coarse paper. "Here is the Cape Shipping List [perhaps including slavers?]. It's business-like details of murders by wholesale tell the cold blooded tales of horror more effectually than eloquent language. They [leave?] & lead the mind to imagine the terrible scenes enacted with poetical power which minute detail fails to [word excised "affect"] produce. I admire this brevity - it is inoffensively offensive. / I am grateful to you, my dear Sir, for your care of my daughter - your help to the helpless. Her mind is acute, & her heart grateful as my own. /I remain / My dear Sir / Yoyrs respectfully & sore hearted / W Hone./" Hone died in 1842, and his hand indicates failing powers, as the above contents do poverty. But his radicalism is still luminous and well-expressed. Dickens and Hone's old collaborator, Cruikshank, attended his funeral. Letters by Hone rarely appear on the market.