Washington State University Library
Pullman, Washington
Washington State University houses a remarkable collection of Hone materials most of which date from the mid- to late-1820s when Hone was working on his antiquarian and popular culture anthologies, The Every-Day Book and The Table Book. Much of the archive consists of Hone's correspondence, drafts, and clippings relevant to these miscellanies. In addition, the archive contains a long manuscript by the early collector of Hone materials, G. T. Lawley. Lawley's bound manuscript, entitled The purely literary productions and correspondence of William Hone and his friends: With an account of the origin and production of his Every-Day Book, Year Book and Table Book from manuscripts and letters in the possession of the author, is useful as a biographical resource (Lawley made his collection available to the William Hackwood, author of William Hone, his Life and Times, 1912), but, as the phrase "purely literary" in the title suggests, Lawley was embarrassed by and attempted to both excuse and overlook Hone's activity as a political parodist and publicist.
The archive itself is divided into three containers, each of which encompasses a number of separate folders.
Container 1, folders 1-16: A large cache of Hone letters and correspondence dating from 1816 to 1842 with the bulk of the materials dating from 1825-1827. There are over 200 items here, chronologically arranged.
Container 1, folders 17-22: Illustrations and papers. Most of the papers are Lawley's notes and the notes and the descriptions of later bibliographers and archivists. Folder 22 contains a copy of Hone's parodic In Parliament. Dropt Clauses Out of the Bill, against the Queen (1820).
Container 2, folders 23-24: Copies of The Every-Day Book and the Table Book. These are later publications of William Tegg, who acquired rights to Hone's antiquarian properties in the early 1830s. These seem to be the copies Lawley used in compiling his study of Hone.
Container 3, folders 25-27: Additional copies of The Every-Day Book, the Table Book and the Year Book with Lawley's notes. Folder 27 contains Lawley's MS which is catalogued as follows:
Lawley, George T.
The purely literary productions and correspondence of William Hone and
his friends. With an account of the origin and production of his Every-Day
Book, Year Book & Table Book from manuscripts and letters
in the possession of the Author. [ca. 1913.] G. T. Lawley, Priestfield
House, Nr. Wolverhampton.
182 l. holograph
spine title: Wm. Hone & His Correspondence
Finally, an extremely useful Finding Aid has been prepared for the Hone Papers by the librarians and archivists at Washington State University. The Finding Aid not only describes Hone, Lawley and the circumstances of the collection in great detail, but it also includes a long list of Hone's correspondents, including George Cruikshank, John Evans, Charles Lamb, and Francis Place. (Lord Byron is listed as one of the correspondents, but this is apparently an error--it is certainly not Byron the poet.)