Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1794-1808 (mainly 1799-1800) (Creation)
Level of description
File
Extent and medium
135 numbered items.
Guarded and filed at NLW.
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Benjamin Flower (1755-1829) was a writer and printer who travelled widely in Europe and spent six months in France in 1791. He was appointed editor of the influential provincial newspaper The Cambridge Intelligencer, which had liberal views. In 1799, he was summoned before the House of Lords for libelling Bishop Watson of Llandaff, whose political conduct he had censured. He was imprisoned in Newgate. He married Eliza Gould (d.1810) in 1800, and they had two daughters, Eliza (1803-1846) and Sarah (1805-1848). Later, he became a printer in Harlow.
Name of creator
Biographical history
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
A collection of one hundred and twenty-one letters, and thirteen further fragments, 1794-1808 (mainly 1799-1800), being mostly the correspondence of Benjamin Flower (1775-1829), political writer and Unitarian (DNB, vol. 19, p. 339) with Eliza Gould, whom he married in January 1800.
The collection is fullest for the period August to October 1799 (the period of Flower's imprisonment at Newgate for an alleged libel against Bishop Watson of Llandaff, whose political conduct he had censured in the Cambridge Intelligencer) when almost daily exchanges took place between himself and Miss Gould. For the years following their marriage in 1800 the correspondence is less complete and consists mainly of domestic trivia and concern for one another's health and welfare. In two lengthy letters, 1799, Flower provides a detailed account of his 'past life, ... present situation and ... future prospects' (nos 17, 19). There are regular references to the difficulties faced by Flower in writing 'paragraphs' for the Cambridge Intelligencer, and, after 1805, to the problems of running a printing business at Harlow. Accounts of contemporary political and literary life are interspersed with personal details, and there is some discussion of the war against France. The later letters also contain many references to their two daughters Eliza (born 1803) and Sarah (born 1805).
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Item: 1.1 Loose Manuscript Documents (NLW MS 13587F). Action: Condition reviewed. Action identifier: 5202283. Date: 20020917. Authorization: Selected for conservation. Authorizing institution: NLW. Action agent: J. Thomas. Status: Loose Manuscript Documents (NLW MS 13587F) : Black dust on paper, tears and creases on documents. Institution: WlAbNL.
Item: 1.2 Loose Manuscript Documents (NLW MS 13587F). Action: Conserved. Action identifier: 5202283. Date: 20031120. Authorizing institution: NLW. Action agent: E. Pugh. Status: Loose Manuscript Documents (NLW MS 13587F) : Repaired paper, guarded and filed and lettered in black. Institution: WlAbNL.
Accruals
System of arrangement
Arranged chronologically at NLW.
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Conditions governing reproduction
Usual copyright laws apply.
Language of material
- English
Script of material
Language and script notes
English.
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Finding aids
For a calendar of the letters see NLW, Schedule of the Benjamin Flower Correspondence, 1980. For a transcript of the contents see NLW ex 2225.
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Related units of description
Publication note
Timothy Whelan, 'Politics, Religion, and Romance: Letters of Eliza Gould Flower, 1794-1802', The Wordsworth Circle, 36.3 (Summer 2005), 85-109 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24044999 [accessed 17 April 2024]
Publication note
Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould Flower, 1794-1808, transcribed and ed. by Timothy D. Whelan (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2008)
Notes area
Note
Title based on contents.
Note
Formerly George Eyre Evans Bequest MS 375.
Note
Preferred citation: NLW MS 13587F.
Note
Nos 17 and 123 are two parts of a single letter.