Huntington Library,
San Marino, California
The Huntington Library has a fascinating, if modest, collection of Hone materials. These items are listed as follows:
Hone, William, English author, bookseller, 1780-1842
Verse:
[sonnet beginning] "Dear to my soul . . ." (RB 137399, vol. 1). In style and substance, the sonnet is very like Charlotte Smith's work. It describes an autumnal scene when "The Tempest's blast . . . bares the sapless trees." The poet wanders in the evening to "the rocky mountains shelving side" and, in his melancholy mood, watches fishing boats glide by beneath. The concluding couplet: "These scenes assuage the pain of inward grief, / Draw forth the silent tear, and give the heart relief." [Huntington Library copyrights forbid me from quoting the full sonnet.]
Prose:
MS written for and partly used by Richard Carlile in his trial (20 pp.; RC 544). Hone was neither a friend nor an admirer of Carlile, but he was a great advocate of a free press--an issue that Carlile's publishing activity frequently caused him to argue in court. This document dates from 1819.
Letters:
11 letters dated from 1821-1831. Of particular interest is a letter from 1829 to Southey regarding his "Life of Bunyan" and a pair of letters from the early 1820s offering both moral and financial support for Hone during his very public lambasting by The Quarterly.
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