James Harris’s ‘Much Ado’: Text and Historical Context of a Sarah Fielding Misattribution in the Gentleman’s Magazine

In January 1752 an unidentified correspondent wrote an indignant letter to the Gentleman's Magazine, complaining of what he considered an unseemly and callous disregard by readers of news reports of a recent destructive hurricane in Jamaica, reports marginalized in the public's attention amid a welter of competing news tidbits of inconsequential and trivial matters. The correspondent, signing his name only as 'X', enclosed in his letter to 'Sylvanus Urban' (the sobriquet of Edward Cave, the GM's editor) a near verbatim copy of a pertinent 'dialogue called Much Ado in the second volume of Miss Fielding's letters', urging the GM to reprint it as a useful admonition against public apathy. Here, De Montluzin talks about the text and historical context of a Sarah Fielding misattribution in the Gentleman's Magazine.