Beschreibung:

Autograph letter signed with initials to Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, concerning her progress on Cecilia.
London: March or April 1782]. 3pp., folded sheet (190 x 120 mm). Addressed to "Mrs Thrale / Harley Street" on the final page. Condition : folds, conjugate leaf inlaid, three small holes along the gutter. Provenance : unnamed early owner's inscription at the head of the first page indicating that the letter had been given by Mrs. Barrett, Burney's neice; Robert Cole (collector's stamp); Sotheby's London, 21 July 1983, lot 125, £2640, Quaritch. a revealing letter from burney to thrale concerning her struggles to finish cecilia . The letter begins with Burney asking for a postponement of a visit until the following week, writing: "…indeed I am so very hard run for time I cannot avoid it. The Summer will come, before even the second vol. is copied; is not that melancholy, -- for Mr. Payne [Thomas Payne, her publisher] , at least? I won't say do forgive me, for who suffers most. I stay not away from you for any thing I can help, or for any thing I like, -- on the contrary, I am really sick & tired of my task so that were I not spurred on by all your kind approbations of what I have ventured to shew, I should long to throw the whole behind the fire…" The letter continues by asking Thrale not to mention her struggles to anyone except Miss Tit, apologizes again for not seeing her and closing, "Witness her honest, affectionate & much tired hand, FB." Cecilia would be published on 12 June 1782.