Autograph letter signed : Swansea, to Miss Smith, 1811 January 15.

Thanking Smith for the "kind, and unmerited interest you have so generously taken in my affairs"; discussing the writing of a Mr. Little (possibly Thomas Little) and how it compares to her own work: "he is certainly very gay (sometimes profligate) but even with this error so charming, that to me it appears impossible to read him without delight, and that he should not be generally admired in Ireland, where in my opinion they are the most liberal minded people under the canopy of Heaven, astonishes me [...] for my own Poetry, I beg leave to observe, that I trust the resemblance it may bear in some passages to that Gentleman's, will not offend the most fastidious [...] I think I am incapable of the wish to promulgate a single line, that should militate against the established principles of virtue and morality"; saying that she has had a clergyman friend read over her new book and that he approved of it; telling Smith that the books are not yet ready and explaining that bad weather and the lack of a pressman has delayed work at "Mr Jenkin's Printing Office"; discussing how to get the books to her when they are printed, ideally via Waterford instead of Holyhead because of the expense ("Land conveyance is to be considered -- and Books are a weighty concern"); mentioning that her brother John has "sent for the Melo Drama, what the result will be God only knows, for myself I am not very sanguine in my expectations, I have made a few slight alterations in it, and called it 'Zaffini,' instead of 'Valvoni' under which title Cherry [probably Andrew Cherry] has performed it at Waterford, with unbounded applause and great success"; commenting on her family: "the House of Kemble have a peculiar way of thinking, and in my own particulars I have been made to feel how very difficult a task it was, to obtain the approbation of my own relations"; saying that it is unnecessary at present to say anything about the melodrama to the Dublin proprietors; asking Smith to send her a copy of the melodrama ("the original copy being so mutilated, and written so bad, that it was with the utmost difficulty I was able to make it out") and suggesting she send it via the coal ships that travel between Swansea and Dublin or to a Mr. Woulds, a friend of hers at the Waterford Theatre; enclosing "the Printed Proposals" (no longer with the letter), as promised; saying that she believes her "Cambrian Friends" expect to have their names printed in the forthcoming book of her poetry ("Poetic Trifles") but this will depend on the cost of printing those additional pages; asking for a list of the Irish subscribers; saying that she has not heard from her sister Jane lately, "and I lament her forgetfulness very much, because I felt for her a warmer affection and interest than for my other sisters, -- for like myself she had been neglected by fortune, and was not according to her own account much noticed by the rest of the family"; writing that she hears her sister Frances Kemble Twiss "gives very gay Routs at Bath, consequently I cannot expect her to remember a sister existing on Eighty pounds a year in Wales"; adding that she lives modestly and has few expenses, except for the claims of "the daughter of my late Husband, whom I educated, and actually doat on [...] but she has married unfortunately and while I exist she must have the little I am enabled to spare."