Originally from Ballymahon, Co. Longford, Robert Bryanton was a schoolmate of Goldsmith's and subsequently a fellow student at Trinity College Dublin, where he matriculated on 18 November 1746, aged 15, and graduated BA in 1751. The two were also, as indicated here, part of the same social circle at George Conway's inn in Lissoy, a possible model for the Three Jolly Pigeons in She Stoops to Conquer. The letter contains rare references to Goldsmith's mother – with whom he seems to have had a fraught relationship before leaving Ireland, probably because of his wayward behaviour – in its opening and in its postscript.

The copy-text is a contemporary copy in an unknown hand of the letter sent to Thomas Percy by Goldsmith's brother Maurice, now in the British Library. It was first published by Percy in 1801. It is addressed to ‘Ballymahon | Ireland’ (some of the address is torn away). ‘Via London’ is also written beside the address. Prior printed from another – corrected – copy in his 1837 biography (P, I: 139–45). Balderston proposes that Percy's transcript was the most literal; we follow this principle in using it as our copy-text, with words struck through re-introduced. Significant variations from Prior are indicated in the notes below. Towards the end of the letter, sections of lines are missing. Balderston supplies those parts from Prior's suggestions, with some changes. We do likewise, indicating in the notes where those differences occur.

William Shaw Mason refers to a copy in an unknown hand then in the possession of one Mrs McDermott of Ballymahon, which may be the copy now in the library of Trinity College Dublin. This copy also appears to have been the source of the first printed version of the letter published in Dublin in Anthologia Hibernica 1 (January–June 1793), 92–4.