William Godwin to Jos. Planter (at the British Library), 13 February, 1818

William Godwin to Jos. Planter (British Library), 13 February, 1818.¹ — -TEI-

Skinner Street

Feb 13, 1818

My dear Sir,

The bearer, Mr. William Hone, is desirous to consult some books in the British Museum, respecting a work he is preparing for the press.² I have often troubled you in behalf of my friends for an admission to the Reading Room, to which you always pay the most obliging attention. This encourages me to trouble [you] on the present occasion.³

I am, my dear sir,
With great regard kindly yours

William Godwin

[postscript:] Mr. Hone's residence is No. 67, Old Bailey

Notes

Adelphi, Hone Collection, Series 1C, Bx 4, fol. 2. [return]

This is likely Hone's edition of his Trials. In that work he referred to a large number of previously published parodies on scriptural texts; it seems plausible that Hone was beginning more methodically to document these parodies for the publication of his Trials and eventually for his projected but never completed History of Parody. [return]

Hone had met Godwin—the "perfectibility philosopher"—in his early radical days in the late 1790s. At that point, according to Hone's fragmentary autobiography at any rate, he was not impressed with the Godwin's petulant behavior. There is little evidence of further contact between the two prior to this note written shortly after Hone's 1817 Trials. [return]

UAB

English

William Godwin to Jos. Planter (at the British Library), 13 February, 1818

William Godwin to Jos. Planter (British Library), 13 February, 1818.¹ — -TEI-

UAB

English

William Godwin to Jos. Planter (at the British Library), 13 February, 1818

William Godwin to Jos. Planter (British Library), 13 February, 1818.1 — -TEI-

William Godwin to Jos. Planter (British Library), 13 February, 1818.¹ — -TEI-