[Henry Francis Cary, translator of Dante, poet, author and Assistant Librarian at the British Museum.] Autograph Letter Signed [to the novelist Thomas Henry Lister], expressing thanks for the placing of one of his sons in a good situation.

See Cary's entry in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 12mo. On the first leaf of a bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged and folded for postage. The recipient is not named, but the item is from the papers of Lady Maria Theresa Lewis, and the letter is written to her first husband, the novelist Thomas Henry Lister (1800-1842), whose father Thomas Lister of Armitage Park was a childhood friend of Cary's (see his 1847 biography by his son). The present item begins ‘My dear Sir, / I construed your silence just as you have explain’d it to me; and was as sure you were doing all you could for me, as if you had told me so while you were doing it. The favour you have been the means of my obtaining is on may accounts prized by me very highly. It places the last of my boys who was without employment, in a situation extremely well suited to him, and in some measure under your superintendence and control; and it comes to me through the medium of yourself the son of my earliest friend, and of Lord John Russell, a statesman whom I sincerely honour. / I am, dear Sir, / ever faithfully your’s / H. F. Cary.’