Editorial Conventions

The edited letters in our Sections are intended to be exact transcriptions of the originals, maintaining the spelling and punctuation used by Elizabeth Montagu, and showing each page separately. We do not preserve or indicate the line endings, since the transcriptions can in each case be compared against the facsimile of the manuscript.

We have used the following editorial conventions to represent amendments and uncertainties in the text.

~~house~~            Deleted, crossed out or erased by author.

/ house\            Word or letter interlineated by author

{house}      Uncertain reading

{?}                Illegible

~~{?}~~                Illegible and deleted, crossed out or erased by author

[  ]                 Word torn from text or otherwise damaged

[house]          Editorial conjecture of word torn from text or otherwise obliterated 

[London]       Non-given but certain place or date

[? London]     Editorial conjecture of place or date

Please note that all dates and location information are provisional, initially taken from the library and archive catalogues. As our section editors continue to work through the material we will update our database and the changes will be reflected across the edition.

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