This fair-copy letter-draft, composed around 1885 (THJ, RWF), was found among Dickinson's papers after her death. The manuscript has been cut apart; the text is incomplete. For additional drafts of the letter, see A 817 and A 819; for a related fragment, see A 820. This fragment may be a draft for a passage in the letter, or, as seems more likely, an autonomous text, incorporated into this letter because of its momentary aptness. The published versions of the letter-draft to Hunt Jackson are all composites based on manuscripts A 817, A 818, and A 819.

Four editorial notations are penciled on the first leaf of A 818: upper right, MTB? HH; upper right, MTB? Letters 1894, 424; upper right, MTB? 413; upper right: ?. The first notation indicates that the draft was addressed to Helen Hunt Jackson; the second notation indicates that the text—or a version of it—was published in Letters (1894), 424; and the third notation indicates that the text—or a version of it—was also published in Letters (1931), 413–14. The authorship and significance of the ? are not known.