Letter from Anne MacVicar Grant of Laggan (1755 - 1838) to the Irish poet James Wills (1790 - 1868). Written from Grant at Brae House to Wills at Blackwell Lodge in Kilmurry, County Kilkenny. Grant transmits a five pound note to Wills from the publisher William Blackwood as partial compensation for the loss of some Wills manuscripts which had gone missing while in the post to Blackwood. Grant offers to forward additional verse from Wills to Blackwood and tries to explain what might have happened to the lost material. She advises Wills to "follow the bent of your own talent & habitual way of thinking in what you write," suggesting that the Blackwoods "have no objection to what is serious, rather prefer it as contrasting like light & shade with the levity of some of their playful essays, which indeed of late have not been fortunate. It is a hard necessity that constrains Authors to by witty once a month & both [Archibald] Campbell and Tom Hamilton Alias Odoherty find it so. The last efforts in both cases are laboured & therefore unsuccesful." She expresses worries about her son John, who had left Gottingen for Leith "more than three weeks since" but had not yet arrived.

Single sheet of Whatman paper, watermarked "J. Whatman | 1828" and folded to make four pages. Black wax seal.