BISHOP MARK COVERS OF GREAT BRITAIN

Rare 1760 Bishop Mark Cover with handwritten endorsement by
Samuel Richardson, Author of the first English Novel,
Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded as well as Clarissa

Reverse of Cover

Non-contemporary back note stating: "Dr. Young the Poet/ Endorsed by/
 S. Richardson/ novelist born 1869 died/ 1761/ 1760 the year before death"

Richardson, Samuel, (19 August 1689 - July 4, 1761) - English Novelist, publisher, and author of Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded, the first real novel in the English language. It was an immensely popular work. This is a folded sheet letter cover addressed to Richardson at his Printing House in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street in London. It was sent by his friend and correspondent, Dr. Edward Young (1683-1765), poet and satirist. With a 17 March Bishop's Mark cancel, the cover is endorsed in Richardson's own handwriting "Dr. Young, 16 March 1760" Anything in Richardson's hand is extremely rare, this is his shaky hand the year before his death. There is another docketing notation "54 Dr. Young" which is likely a later applied cataloguing appellation. The cover was torn and repaired with archival tape on which is the pencil notation: "Dr. Young the Poet/ Endorsed by/ S. Richardson/ novelist born 1869 died/ 1761/ 1760 the year before death". A rare item for a Bishop Mark or Richardson collection.

     In his later years, Richardson began to suffer from insomnia and paroxysms. His condition in his waning years is described by his friend Miss Talbot who wrote of his final apoplectic stroke, "One has long apprehended some stroke of this kind; the disease made its gradual approaches by that heaviness which clouded the cheerfulness of his conversation, that used to be so lively and so instructive; by the encreased tremblings which unfitted that hand so peculiarly formed to guide the pen." Here is a clear example of "that hand so peculiarly formed to guide the pen" and the "encreased tremblings" that distorted it.
     The writer Dr. Edward Young was a noted only a noted poet and satirist, but was a royal chaplain before becoming rector of Welwyn in 1730. His step daughter married Lord Palmerston and he tutored Goethe in English. Perhaps best known for his seven satires the Universal Passions and his poem "Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality".

Bishop Mark Type 3 (MR Joined)
17 March [1760]

Large Letter Black Straightline Cancel
"WELWYN" Hertfordshire
The First Welwyn cancel measuring 35x7 mm, Type 4
First issued in 1756