Diplomatic Text
4
1781[1]
Fryday Ap. 20.th. 1781[2]
did not I promise an Epictetus[3]
my dear Miʃs Hamilton? Le voici.
Dear Miʃs Sharpe went
to Mill Hill on Wednesday, & I believe
will be very little in Town this Year.
I hope the Air & Riding will be of Use
to her, which reconciles me to the not having
her within my reach every day. I propose
to go to her to morrow & to stay at Mill
Hill till Tuesday. Adieu. Your affectionately
ECarter
only think of Ly dartrey being
flown too.[4]
To
Miʃs Hamil[ton][5]
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Notes
1. The year is written vertically.
2. Hamilton, as so often, has specified the year after a date. In this case she appears also to have added to Carter's ‘20.’ a superscript ‘th’ with its own dot underneath Carter's dot. If this annotation and the pencil year at top left are both by Hamilton, they must have been made at different times.
3. Carter's best-known work was the translation All the works of Epictetus, which are now extant (1758).
4. The postscript appears to the left of the signature and extends into the left margin.
5. The direction is written vertically.
Normalised Text
Friday April 20.
did not I promise an Epictetus
my dear Miss Hamilton? Le voici.
Dear Miss Sharpe went
to Mill Hill on Wednesday, & I believe
will be very little in Town this Year.
I hope the Air & Riding will be of Use
to her, which reconciles me to the not having
her within my reach every day. I propose
to go to her to morrow & to stay at Mill
Hill till Tuesday. Adieu. Your affectionately
Elizabeth Carter
only think of Ly dartrey being
flown too.
To
Miss Hamilton
quotations, spellings, uncorrected forms, split words, abbreviations, formatting)
Notes
Metadata
Library References
Repository: Houghton Library Repository, Harvard University
Archive: Elizabeth Carter and Hannah More letters to Mary Hamilton
Item title: Letter from Elizabeth Carter to Mary Hamilton
Shelfmark: MS Eng 1778 4
Correspondence Details
Sender: Elizabeth Carter
Place sent: London (certainty: medium)
Addressee: Mary Hamilton
Place received: unknown
Date sent: 20 April 1781
Letter Description
Summary: Letter from Elizabeth Carter to Mary Hamilton, apparently accompanying a copy of Epictetus, presumably her own translation (first published 1758). Carter announces that Mary Sharpe has gone to Mill Hill and that she proposes to join her there for four days.
Original entry in Houghton Library catalogue: Carter, Elizabeth, 1717-1806. Autograph manuscript letter (signed) to Mary Hamilton; London?, 1781 April 20.
Length: 1 sheet, 000 words
Transliteration Information
Editorial declaration: First edited in the project 'Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers' (Hannah Barker, Sophie Coulombeau, David Denison, Tino Oudesluijs, Cassandra Ulph, Christine Wallis & Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, 2019-2023).
All quotation marks are retained in the text and are represented by appropriate Unicode characters. Words split across two lines may have a hyphen on the first, the second or both fragments (reco-|ver, imperfect|-ly, satisfacti-|-on); or a double hyphen (pur=|port, dan|=ger, qua=|=litys); or none (respect|ing). Any point in abbreviations with superscripted letter(s) is placed last, regardless of relative left-right orientation in the original. Thus, Mrs. or Mrs may occur, but M.rs or Mr.s do not.
Acknowledgements: XML version first created without transcription as part of project 'Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers', funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council under grant AH/S007121/1. Transcription added after the funded period under the supervision of David Denison and Nuria Yáñez-Bouza.
Transliterator: Pete Morris, Artificial Intelligence and Ideas Adoption (AIIA), The University of Manchester Library (Plain text transliteration submitted 13 January 2026)
Cataloguer: Bonnie B. Salt, Archivist, Houghton Library
Copyright: Transcriptions, notes and TEI/XML © the editors
Revision date: 27 July 2026
