Piozzi, Hester Lynch Thrale

Autograph letter signed ("H.L.P."), 3 pages (9 1/8 x 7 3/8 in.; 232 x 188 mm), Bristol Hotwells, 7 December 1798, to Samuel Lysons in London; formerly folded, small tear from seal in blank portion of address leaf. Maroon cloth folding-case, gilt-stamped title on spine.

Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi (1741–1821), as wife of the London brewer Henry Thrale, became mistress of an informal salon at her home, where she ministered to the needs of Samuel Johnson, and after his death became the source of many anecdotes about him, but also found her own feet as a writer.  After Thrale's death (1781), her marriage to the musician Gabriel Mario Piozzi aroused a good deal of prejudice in her circle, which subsided as the years went by. Her letters are, like her conversation must have been, wide-ranging, witty, and a bit disjointed. The next three lots are no exception.

Samuel Lysons (1763–1819), engraver and antiquary, collected attacks on Thrale at the time of her marriage to Piozzi. She writes: "May we hope to see Mrs. [Sarah] Siddons at Bath? tis possible. Your Company will be very valuable indeed pray bring us some original anecdotes. Mr. ... The Printseller can have no new Anecdotes of Johnson ... that is impossible. the World has had Information of every time he blew his nose I believe."