BIB_ID
363567
Accession number
MA 49.52
Creator
Dunlop, Frances Anna Wallace, 1730-1815.
Display Date
1789 June 27-July 13.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan before 1913.
Description
1 item (6 p., with address) ; 25.5 and 22.8 cm
Notes
Addressed to "Mr. Robert Burns / Ellisland / Dumfries."
Docketed.
Dunlop likely reacquired these letters after Burns's death and left them to her descendants with the Lochryan manuscripts (42 of Burns's letters to Mrs. Dunlop and some autograph poems, now MA 46 in the Morgan's collection).
Franked by W. Kerr at "Edinburgh Seventeenth July 1789."
Part of a large collection of letters from Frances Dunlop to Robert Burns. Letters in the collection are described in individual records; see MA 49 for more information.
The two sheets of this letter are not bound on consecutive pages.
With postmark and trace of a seal.
Docketed.
Dunlop likely reacquired these letters after Burns's death and left them to her descendants with the Lochryan manuscripts (42 of Burns's letters to Mrs. Dunlop and some autograph poems, now MA 46 in the Morgan's collection).
Franked by W. Kerr at "Edinburgh Seventeenth July 1789."
Part of a large collection of letters from Frances Dunlop to Robert Burns. Letters in the collection are described in individual records; see MA 49 for more information.
The two sheets of this letter are not bound on consecutive pages.
With postmark and trace of a seal.
Provenance
General Sir John Wallace; by descent to Sir William Thomas Francis Agnew Wallace; bequeathed to his brother, Colonel F.J. Wallace; acquired by Robert Borthwick Adam before 1898; purchased by Pierpont Morgan before 1913, possibly from the London dealer Pearson.
Summary
Telling him that she has just received his letter; discussing religious faith: "I even find in your faith a charming support and auxiliary for my own, as the one is founded on solid understanding and rational induction, and the other on the spontaneous, undigested suggestions of warm affections"; asking for his thoughts on Dr. John Moore's Zeluco; taking up her pen more than two weeks later and explaining that she was away from home in the interim; alluding to events in France related to the French Revolution; commenting on the death of an elderly servant who "attended [her] inlying of 13 children"; mentioning a "humble poetess who came from Ecclesfechan to be [her] chamber-maid" [Janet Little]; telling him that she is sending his books to [John] Wilson of Kilmarnock; explaining the story behind a poem by Little; hoping he will write to her frequently in August.
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