23 April 1788

Mary Scott, Milborne Port, to Richard Pulteney, Blandford, 23 April 1788.

M-port April 23^rd 1788

Sir

I am very sorry I h^v not had it in my power to request y^r acceptance of the little poem w^ch accompanies this letter before this time. But tho’ it has now been publish’d a month, thro’ y^e negligence of the Printer or his servants, I did not receive any copies till last Saturday.

The Poem was corrected for the press before I lost my mother, or it could not h^v been printed now. The very great obligations the Town of Milborn port is under to the general hospital at Bath induc’d me to publish it for the benefit of that excellent institution.

With Compliments to M^rs Pulteney

I am S^r y^r oblig’d Sev^t

M Scott

Text: Richard Pulteney Papers, Linnean Society, London. Address: D^r Pultney. No postmark. Note on address page reads “Miss Scott Ap. 23. 88.” This is the only surviving autograph letter by Mary Scott, published here for the first time. Scott has sent Pulteney a copy of her poem, Messiah, a Poem, in Two Parts. Published for the Benefit of the General Hospital at Bath, by Miss Scott, Author of The Female Advocate. The work was printed in Bath by Richard Cruttwell and sold in London by Joseph Johnson. Scott would marry John Taylor about two weeks after this letter. Pulteney had also appeared in The Female Advocate (1774), also printed and sold by Johnson.