William Steele, London, to Mary Steele, Broughton, [Saturday] 9 August 1777.

London Aug 9th 1777

   Amid the discordant Din of Carts Coaches Chaises &c &c continually rolling over the Pavement, the thick smoaky Atmosphere we breathe in & the heat of the Weather I think we ought to be grateful that we are neither deafen’d suffocated nor melted, as I have the pleasure to assure my Dear Maria we are not totally, but thro’ Mercy enjoy our health, & are hospitably & agreeably entertained by our good Host & Hostess who are very sollicitous to oblige us.

   I long’d much for your Company Thursday on Richmond Hill & Kew Gardens where we spent the Afternoon, we drank Tea at Mrs Honor’s & afterwards rambled in the Gardens which are open’d Thursdays for Company the Place is agreeable beyond description & I could not in the Compass of a Letter describe half it’s beauties, nor indeed had we time to see half, had you been there, your poetical Enthusiasm must have taken fire & painted the lovely Scenes in the softest Cadence of your gentle Muse.

   We have appointed to go to Dulwich Tuesday & Mr Dun is so obliging as to send his Coach to carry us.

   I have left Sisters Manuscript with Messrs Dilly & am to call again Monday, I have not show’d them Danebury yet but intend it then.

   Mr Berdmore is at Work for me but I fear will not finish till the latter end of next Week. If so we cannot proceed in our Journey before Monday Sennight.  I hope to receive a Letter from you Monday. We long to hear from home & shall rejoice to hear that Sister is a little better. – Let me hear from you again before we leave London.  We join in our best wishes for every one dear to us & am My Dear Daughters ever

                     affectionate Far W Steele

  Shall be glad to know if you have heard from the dear little maidens

Text: Steele Collection, STE 4/5/lii, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. No postmark. Address: Miss Steele / Broughton near / Stockbridge / Hants. For an annotated text of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, vol. 3, pp. 276-77. 

Other than his interest in some new false teeth, William Steele was in London primarily to find a publisher for Anne Steele’s unpublished poetry and prose, material that did not appear in (or was written after the publication of) Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional (1760). William Steele was also looking for a publisher for Mary Steele’s Danebury and the two accompanying odes that appeared with it. He was probably sharing with the booksellers his own transcription of Danebury (that manuscript can be found in the Steele Collection, STE 5/7). Both Anne Steele’s unpublished poetry and prose and Mary Steele’s Danebury would eventually appear in print in Bristol but not by a London publisher such as the Dillys. Anne Steele’s new material would comprise the third volume in Caleb Evans’s 1780 reprint of her two-volume 1760 London edition of Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional. Evans would also be instrumental in the publication of Danebury in 1779.