HOGARTH SIR,—In his kindly and painstaking review of my biography
of William Hogarth (July 22), Mr. Angus Wilson—among other- pertinent criticisms about which it would ill become me to dispute with him—remarks that, although 1 cite the Burney Collection in my bibliography. he 'cannot feel' that I have made 'any serious
attack' upon this rich accumulation of eighteenth-century newspapers, and that such quotations as I print are referred to as 'quota- tions from secondary sources. . . .' May I be allowed to reassure him on the former, and correct him on the latter, point? As he will notice, if he again consults my text, all the extracts I publish are not attributed to secon- dary sources, the contemporary accounts of the punishment of Mother Needham, the ex- ploits of Kate Hackabout, etc., incorporated in my chapter on the social background of A Harlot's Progress, having been transcribed by me from the Daily Courant and similar daily and weekly journals now preserved in the Burney Collection at the British Museum.— Yours faithfully.
PCTtiR QUENNELL
65,1 Eaton Square, London, SW/
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