[Robert Hawker, Devon clergyman called the 'Star of the West'.] Autograph Letter Signed ('Rob Hawker') to London bookseller Ebenezer Palmer, regarding the marketing of the tracts of the Village Sermon Society.

2pp, 12mo. Bifolium. In fair condition, aged and spotted, with loss at foot of reverse of last leaf, the verso of which is addressed to 'Mr Palmer | Bookseller | 18 Paternoster Row'. The recipient is the theological bookseller Ebenezer Palmer the elder (c.1782-1866). Twenty-two lines of text in a difficult hand. The stridently pious tone perhaps hints at some degree of mental instability. The letter opens: 'My dear Sir & friend in the LORD | I greet you in Him'. He avails himself of the opportunity 'of writing by Mr paris', and calls for blessings on Palmer's house for his work with the Gospel Tract Society and Village Sermon Society. He feels sure that the 'friends' in the former with 'concur in the promotion' of the latter, 'the object of both being one & the same'. He ends with the suggestion that Palmer, 'through some subordinate Person', should 'arrange so as to get many of he little bookselling Pamphlets [?] to purchase for [?] & for ready money a quarter of an hundred at a time – the Knowledge of the V S Society would soon be diffused thro the Cities & Borough of Southwark.' Hawker was the grandfather of the eccentric Cornish clergyman and antiquary Robert Stephen Hawker, author of 'The Song of the Western Man' ('And shall Trelawny die?').