William Hamilton Reid

The son of servants in the household of the Duke of Hamilton, Reid was a Londoner, initially apprenticed to a maker of silver buckles. Completing this Soho apprenticeship in 1779, he worked as a journeyman in his trade, in Smithfield, London.{{cite book|author1=Steve Clark|author2=David Worrall|title=Historicizing Blake|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vTywCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA27|date=31 December 2015|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|isbn=978-1-349-23477-6|page=27}} In 1811 he wrote that when young he heard the preachers Martin Madan and William Romaine.{{cite book|title=The Gentleman's Magazine: 1811|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yxJEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA231|year=1811|publisher=E. Cave|page=231}}

Reid began on a literary career in the 1780s. He was introduced to the Esto Perpetua Whig political writers' club, founded in 1785, "almost certainly," according to Iain McCalman, by George Ellis.{{cite book|author1=Steve Clark|author2=David Worrall|title=Historicizing Blake|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vTywCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA28|date=31 December 2015|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|isbn=978-1-349-23477-6|page=28}}{{cite book|author=Leslie Mitchell|title=The Whig World: 1760-1837|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EujBfewTGtYC&pg=PA23|date=15 July 2006|publisher=A&C Black|isbn=978-0-8264-2201-9|pages=23–}}

A contributor to the Visits from the World of Spirits (1791) of Henry Lemoine, Reid has been described as a "typical Jacobin litterateur" of the 1790s.{{cite book|author=Knud Haakonssen|title=Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oOY56Aqh77YC&pg=PA318|date=2 November 2006|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-02987-2|page=318}}{{cite journal |last1=Esterhammer |first1=Angela |title=Historicizing Blake at Strawberry Hill |journal=The Wordsworth Circle |date=1991 |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=135–136 |doi=10.1086/TWC24044590 |jstor=24044590 |s2cid=165343166 }} In 1792 he mentioned work he had as a translator, from Dutch.{{cite book|author=Augustus Charles Bickley|author-link=Augustus Charles Bickley|title=Bibliographical Notes|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dcsYAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA55|year=1889|publisher=E. Stock|page=55}} This employment was removed, by a monopoly given to the Post Office.

As an early member of the radical London Corresponding Society (LCS), Reid in 1793 wrote Hum! Hum!, a satirical song against those who professed "loyalism" (i.e. anti-radicalism) as a way to personal advancement. He was apprehended in early 1798 during a raid on a meeting in the St Martin's Lane area of London, which took in 57 of those attending but not John Binns, a prominent figure of the United Irishmen, and the raid's intended target. (Binns was arrested not much later, according to Reid, with Arthur O'Connor in Kent.) McCalman states that Reid then acted as a government informer, monitoring a subversive meeting in Cripplegate, as a matter of self-preservation. The circulation of his intelligence was to George Canning, Richard Ford, and John King. Reid also sought patronage, by conforming to loyalist attitudes of the period, putting himself forward as a man of letters.{{cite book|author=Iain McCalman|title=Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3KROAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1|date=3 March 1988|publisher=CUP Archive|isbn=978-0-521-30755-0|page=1}}{{cite book|author1=Steve Clark|author2=David Worrall|title=Historicizing Blake|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vTywCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA25|date=31 December 2015|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|isbn=978-1-349-23477-6|pages=25–6, 40 note 4}} He subsequently wrote a pamphlet from a loyalist point of view, the Rise and Dissolution of the Infidel Societies of 1800 (see below), for which he is best known.{{cite journal |last1=McCalman |first1=Iain |title=Ultra-Radicalism and Convivial Debating-Clubs in London, 1795-1838 |journal=The English Historical Review |date=1987 |volume=102 |issue=403 |pages=309–333 |doi=10.1093/ehr/CII.403.309 |jstor=572273 |doi-access=free }}{{cite book|author=Mark Philp|title=Reforming Ideas in Britain: Politics and Language in the Shadow of the French Revolution, 1789–1815|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QdkaAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA53|date=28 November 2013|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-02728-2|page=53}}{{cite book|title=The British Critic: A New Review|url=https://archive.org/details/britishcritican28unkngoog|year=1800|publisher=F. and C. Rivington|page=[https://archive.org/details/britishcritican28unkngoog/page/n235 197]}} Around this time he also expressed similar opinions in letters to the Anti-Jacobin Review.{{cite book|author=Emily L De|title=Anti-Jacobins: The Early Contributors To The Anti-Jacobin Review|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fr6xCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA140|date=29 March 1988|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|isbn=978-1-349-19137-6|pages=140–}} He was given cash by Canning, and the approval, according to his widow, of the bishops Shute Barrington and Beilby Porteus, with Porteus offering him Anglican ordination.

Reid later edited the Orthodox Churchman's Magazine, which was subsequently taken over by John Watkins.{{cite journal |last1=Roberts |first1=M. J. D. |title=The Society for the Suppression of Vice and Its Early Critics, 1802-1812 |journal=The Historical Journal |date=1983 |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=159–176 |doi=10.1017/S0018246X00019646 |jstor=2638853 |s2cid=159943236 }}{{cite book|title=A New Biographical Dictionary, of 3000 Contemporary Public Characters, British and Foreign, of All Ranks and Professions|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Dy8rAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA591|year=1825|publisher=G. B. Whittaker|page=591}} The Magazine was hostile to deists, Latitudinarians, Methodists and Unitarians, and its tone was set from the first issue in 1801 by the High Church views of William Stevens.{{cite book|author=Francis Edward Mineka|title=The Dissidence of Dissent: The Monthly Repository, 1806–1838, Under the Editorship of Robert Aspland, W. J. Fox, R. H. Horne, & Leigh Hunt. With a Chapter on Religious Periodicals, 1700-1825|year=1944|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|page=62}}{{cite book|author=Robert M. Andrews|title=Lay Activism and the High Church Movement of the Late Eighteenth Century: The Life and Thought of William Stevens, 1732-1807|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xAV2CQAAQBAJ&pg=PA211|date=7 May 2015|publisher=BRILL|isbn=978-90-04-29379-3|page=211}}

In 1806, however, Reid dropped his Anglican affiliations, joining the Unitarian congregation of Thomas Belsham in Hackney.{{cite book|author=Knud Haakonssen|title=Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hszsutQ5xrcC&pg=PA331|date=30 May 1996|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-56060-3|pages=331–2}} He contributed unpaid material to the Monthly Repository. In the September 1806 issue of the Repository, an article signed "W. H. R." commented favourably on the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire, and the prospects for universal toleration.{{cite book|author1=Theophilus Lindsey|author2=G. M. Ditchfield|title=The Letters of Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808): 1789-1808|date=1 December 2012|publisher=Boydell Press|isbn=978-1-84383-742-8|page=633 note 4}}

Reid went on to abandon the Unitarianism he found too formal.{{cite book|author1=Steve Clark|author2=David Worrall|title=Historicizing Blake|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vTywCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA38|date=31 December 2015|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|isbn=978-1-349-23477-6|page=34}} He twice called on the Royal Literary Fund for support, initially in 1810.{{cite book|author1=Steve Clark|author2=David Worrall|title=Historicizing Blake|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vTywCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA38|date=31 December 2015|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|isbn=978-1-349-23477-6|page=38}}{{cite book|author=George Laurence Gomme|title=Bibliographical Notes: A Classified Collection of the Chief Contents of "The Gentleman's Magazine" from 1731–1868|url=https://archive.org/details/bibliographical00gommgoog|year=1889|publisher=Stock|page=viii}} He died on 3 June 1826.{{cite book|title=The Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GX4UAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA564|year=1826|publisher=Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper|page=564}}

Reid's work on London debating societies followed a magistrate's raid in 1798. He gave specifics of seven London societies, five of those meeting in the City of London area. There are few other sources for these clubs.{{cite journal |last1=Thale |first1=Mary |title=London Debating Societies in the 1790s |journal=The Historical Journal |date=1989 |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=57–86 |doi=10.1017/S0018246X00015302 |jstor=2639817 |s2cid=162874936 }} His political tone is described as "alarmist".{{cite journal |last1=Fulford |first1=Tim |title=Conducting the Vital Fluid: The Politics and Poetics of Mesmerism in the 1790s |journal=Studies in Romanticism |date=2004 |volume=43 |issue=1 |pages=57–78 |id={{Gale|A118675764}} {{ProQuest|223460362}} |doi=10.2307/25601659 |jstor=25601659 }} The work has been called a "hostile caricature" and "indiscriminate attack on both radicals and sectarians".{{cite book|author=Heather Glen|title=Vision and Disenchantment: Blake's Songs and Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w2w5AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA27|date=7 July 1983|publisher=CUP Archive|isbn=978-0-521-25084-9|page=27}}

Among Reid's influences was a recent book on French Jacobinism by the Abbé Barruel. A contemporary view saw The Rise and Dissolution as following also the thought of John Robison.{{cite book|author=Ralph Griffiths|title=The Monthly Review|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a-rkAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA213|year=1800|publisher=R. Griffiths|page=213}}

The work played on fears that the debating societies were breeding grounds for subversion and plotting, and that the "clubbists" who frequented them were potential revolutionaries.{{cite book|author=Paul Keen|title=The Crisis of Literature in the 1790s: Print Culture and the Public Sphere|url=https://archive.org/details/crisisofliteratu00keen|url-access=registration|date=28 November 1999|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-139-42648-0|page=[https://archive.org/details/crisisofliteratu00keen/page/170 170]}}{{cite book|author=Ian Haywood|title=Romanticism and Caricature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vVSyAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA184|date=24 October 2013|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-04421-0|page=184 note 38}} Reid referenced the pre-1789 Robin Hood Society.{{cite book|author=Nicholas Hans|title=New Trends in Education in the Eighteenth Century|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oTxx6Hjex98C&pg=PA172|date=January 1998|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-0-415-17611-8|page=172}} He also claimed that a typical benefit society meeting might be the occasion for circulation of The Age of Reason.{{cite journal |last1=Budd |first1=Susan |title=The Loss of Faith. Reasons for Unbelief among Members of the Secular Movement in England, 1850-1950 |journal=Past & Present |date=1967 |issue=36 |pages=106–125 |doi=10.1093/past/36.1.106 |jstor=649918 }}

Adopting Edmund Burke's doctrine of the negative effects of association, Reid attributed the irreligion and subversion expressed in debating clubs to the thought of William Godwin, Tom Paine, Joseph Priestley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire.{{cite book|author=Jan Golinski|title=Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TzrykdCRb1EC&pg=PA185|date=28 June 1999|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-65952-9|page=185}} It was reviewed in the New Annual Register as a "miscellaneous production", while The Critical Review noted that Reid's work in its 117 pages included in its net also Methodist preachers and Swedenborgians, the Whig Club and the LCS.{{cite book|author=Andrew Kippis|title=The New Annual Register, Or, General Repository of History, Politics, and Literature |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iKwvAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA312|year=1801|publisher=G. G. J. and J. Robinson|page=312}}{{cite book|author=Tobias George Smollett|title=The Critical Review: Or, Annals of Literature|url=https://archive.org/details/criticalreviewo19unkngoog|year=1800|publisher=R[ichard]. Baldwin, at the Rose in Pater-noster-Row|page=[https://archive.org/details/criticalreviewo19unkngoog/page/n363 355]}} One consequence of Reid's work as an informer, at the Green Dragon in Cripplegate, was that he was able to link Bannister Truelock, a millenarian Methodist preacher in the LCS, to James Hadfield, who attempted in 1800 to assassinate the King.{{cite book|author1=Steve Clark|author2=David Worrall|title=Historicizing Blake|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vTywCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA34|date=31 December 2015|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|isbn=978-1-349-23477-6|page=34}}

Reid's attack on Godwin has been called "dull and vicious", and compared to that of the loyalist John Bowles.{{cite book|author=Peter H. Marshall|title=William Godwin|url=https://archive.org/details/williamgodwin0000mars|url-access=registration|year=1984|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-10544-5|page=[https://archive.org/details/williamgodwin0000mars/page/224 224]}} Against Paine's influence, Reid recommended Richard Watson's Apology for the Bible.{{cite book|author=Robert Rix|title=William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hcq6NA6_GJAC&pg=PA40|date=1 January 2007|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|isbn=978-0-7546-5600-5|page=40}} The anti-Methodist polemicist Thomas Ellis Owen cited Reid in his 1801 tract Hints to Heads of Families.{{cite book|title=Hints to Heads of Families|edition=2nd|author=Thomas Ellis Owen|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w-VeAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA8|year=1801|publisher=MS. note. F. & C. Rivington|page=8}}{{cite ODNB|id=21035|first=Hywel Meilyr|last=Davies|title=Owen, Thomas Ellis}}

Reid gave an account of the expulsions of the booksellers John Bone (a United Englishman) and Richard Lee ("Citizen Lee", a Methodist) from the LCS, on the grounds of their refusal to sell The Age of Reason and the Ruins of Empire of the Comte de Volney.{{cite ODNB|id=42297|title=London Corresponding Society|first=Michael T.|last=Davis}}{{cite journal |last1=Mee |first1=Jon |title=Anxieties of Enthusiasm: Coleridge, Prophecy, and Popular Politics in the 1790s |journal=Huntington Library Quarterly |date=1997 |volume=60 |issue=1/2 |pages=179–203 |doi=10.2307/3817836 |jstor=3817836 }} E. P. Thompson considered accurate at least Reid's description of this phase of the LCS, during which Francis Place was planning the publication of a cheap edition of The Age of Reason. This initiative was divisive, and its effect on the LCS was to bring to the surface religious differences.{{cite book|author=E. P. Thompson|title=The Making of the English Working Class|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QKHIJpSnBTIC&pg=PT143|date=26 September 2002|publisher=Penguin Books Limited|isbn=978-0-14-193489-1|pages=143–4}}

In 1795, Methodists in the LCS had tried, and failed, to purge deists and atheists. Robert Watson (c.1746–1838), a close associate of Lord George Gordon, had been excluded from membership, together with hatter Richard Hodgson for supporting the views of Paine.{{cite book|author=Jon Mee|title=Romanticism, Enthusiasm, and Regulation: Poetics and the Policing of Culture in the Romantic Period|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h4JTegEvUdkC&pg=PA107|year=2005|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-928478-8|pages=107–8}} According to Thale, Reid himself broke from the LCS when deism was becoming compulsory for its members.{{cite book|author1=Mary Thale|author2=London Corresponding Society|title=Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792-1799|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JD89AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA302|date=4 August 1983|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-24363-6|page=302}} Bone became a founder of the London Reformation Society.{{cite book|author1=Jackie DiSalvo|author2=G. A. Rosso|author3=Christopher Z. Hobson|title=Blake, Politics, and History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=38ZgCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA106|date=14 August 2015|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-38138-9|page=106}} Charles Sturt (1763–1812), a Member of Parliament and honorary LCS member, gave a compatible account of Lee's two expulsions from the LCS in a speech in the Commons.{{cite book|author=John Barrell|title=Imagining the King's Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, 1793-1796|url=https://archive.org/details/imaginingkingsde0000barr|url-access=registration|year=2000|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-811292-1|pages=[https://archive.org/details/imaginingkingsde0000barr/page/618 618]–9}}

Rise and Dissolution purported to trace the connections, dating from the 17th century, between religious enthusiasm and secular reform organisations.{{cite book|author=Saree Makdisi|title=William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AnB0jcrgxIwC&pg=PA21|year=2003|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-50259-5|page=21}} Reid associated Priestley's rational dissent with the opinions of David Williams, supporter of the Octagon Chapel liturgy and "unconditional philosophical liberty".{{cite book|author=Knud Haakonssen|title=Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oOY56Aqh77YC&pg=PA319|date=2 November 2006|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-02987-2|page=319}}{{cite ODNB|id=29494|first=Damian Walford|last=Davies|title=Williams, David}} He tended to blur distinctions between reformers, unbelievers, deists and millenarians, all of whom were accorded a hearing in the Unitarian tradition of unbounded debate.{{cite book|author=Martin Priestman|title=Romantic Atheism: Poetry and Freethought, 1780–1830|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H2WWplQ7SDAC&pg=PA43|date=27 January 2000|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-139-43124-8|page=43}} He characterized the "Society of Ancient Deists", who met near Hoxton in the period 1770 to 1790, as "infidel mystics".{{cite book|author=J. F. C. Harrison|title=The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780-1850|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LEdNkquyXAwC&pg=RA1-PA1797|date=7 May 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-136-29876-9|page=1797}}{{cite book|author=Gregory Claeys|title=Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2_2IAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA179|date=11 September 2002|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-99859-3|page=179}}

Reid also described as dangerous the staid deist and political debating clubs run by Williams. In the context of the Corresponding Societies Act 1799 (39 Geo. 3. c. 79), he noted that Middlesex magistrates had been cracking down on meetings of followers of Priestley, as deist-radical, and as so many attempts by the "infidel illuminati" to establish a "place of public instruction".{{cite journal |last1=Weindling |first1=Paul |title=Science and Sedition: How Effective Were the Acts Licensing Lectures and Meetings, 1795-1819? |journal=The British Journal for the History of Science |date=1980 |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=139–153 |doi=10.1017/S000708740001774X |jstor=4025892 |pmid=11610822 |s2cid=41250726 }}

Reid took issue with evangelicals and their literature, such as the Evangelical Magazine and its reporting of missionary work.{{cite book|author1=Timothy Morton|author2=Nigel Smith|title=Radicalism in British Literary Culture, 1650-1830: From Revolution to Revolution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rfg3gQEWmAAC&pg=PA154|date=1 October 2009|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-12087-6|page=154}} He warned also against the numerous "fanatical preachers" of low backgrounds, such as Richard Brothers.{{cite journal |last1=Rubens |first1=Alfred |title=Portrait of Anglo-Jewry 1656-1836 |journal=Transactions |publisher=Jewish Historical Society of England |date=1955 |volume=19 |pages=13–52 |jstor=29777944 }} Commentary in John Brewster's Secular Essay of 1802 clarifies that street preachers to whom Reid objected, of Spa Fields and Islington, included Calvinistic Methodists, many of them young men, associated with Lady Anne Agnes Erskine's connexion.{{cite book|author=John Brewster|title=A Secular Essay: containing a retrospective view of events, connected with the ecclesiastical history of England, during the eighteenth century with reflections on the state of practical religion in that period|url=https://archive.org/details/secularessaycont00brew_0|year=1802|publisher=F. and C. Rivington|page=[https://archive.org/details/secularessaycont00brew_0/page/178 178]}}

Reid isolated the concept of self-sufficiency, at the spiritual level, as the factor connecting religious enthusiasts and rationalist infidels. In this way he linked Samuel How, an antinomian writer in 1640, with Paine. How's work, The Sufficiency of the Spirit, had been in print since 1792.{{cite book|author=Robert Rix|title=William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hcq6NA6_GJAC&pg=PA29|date=1 January 2007|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|isbn=978-0-7546-5600-5|page=29}} He linked also Swedenborg's theology with Muggletonian belief in the antinomian conception of Christ retaining human form in heaven.{{cite book|author=Martin Priestman|title=Romantic Atheism: Poetry and Freethought, 1780–1830|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H2WWplQ7SDAC&pg=PA41|date=27 January 2000|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-139-43124-8|page=41}}{{cite book|author=Morton D. Paley|title=Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry|url=https://archive.org/details/apocalypsemillen0000pale|url-access=registration|date=7 October 1999|publisher=Clarendon Press|isbn=978-0-19-158468-8|page=[https://archive.org/details/apocalypsemillen0000pale/page/23 23]}} Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker compare Rise and Dissolution to the heresiological work Gangraena of 1646.{{cite book|author1=Peter Linebaugh|author2=Marcus Rediker|title=The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IVkTAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA282|date=3 September 2013|publisher=Beacon Press|isbn=978-0-8070-5015-6|page=282}}

Reid is cited as one of the co-authors of Criticisms on the Rolliad (1784). Sherbo identifies Reid's first published verse as from 1787, in the Gentleman's Magazine.{{cite web|url=http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1373&context=ssl|title=William Hamilton Reid (fl. 1786–1824): A Forgotten Poet|last=Sherbo|first=Arthur|date=1 January 1996|work=Studies in Scottish Literature, volume 29 issue 1 article 20|accessdate=6 May 2016}} On his own account, Reid belonged in the group of poets including Thomas Chatterton, Robert Burns, Charlotte Smith and Ann Yearsley.{{cite book|title=Walker's Hibernian Magazine, Or, Compendium of Entertaining Knowledge|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aOo5AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA22|year=1790|publisher=R. Gibson|pages=22–4}} Another such "untutored" poet was Ann Batten Cristall. Such writers were typically promoted by supportive reviewers. Reid had the backing of John Nichols of the Gentleman's Magazine.{{cite book|author=Elizabeth Lois Mann|title=The Problem of Originality in English Literary Criticism, 1750–1800|page=102|year=1939|publisher=University of Chicago}}{{cite book|author=John Nichols|title=The Gentleman's Magazine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lV3PAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA593|year=1788|publisher=E. Cave|pages=593–5}}

• Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Wardle, 1808;{{cite web|url=http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/AuthorRecord.php?action=GET&recordid=33296|title=spenserians.cath.vt.edu, William Hamilton Reid (1760 ca.-1826)|accessdate=2 May 2016}} on Gwyllym Lloyd Wardle
• Beauties selected from the writings of the late William Paley ... With an account of his life and critical remarks upon some of his peculiar opinions, 1810{{cite book|author1=William Paley|author2=William Hamilton Reid|title=Beauties selected from the writings of the late William Paley ... With an account of his life and critical remarks upon some of his peculiar opinions|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yRJhAAAAcAAJ|year=1810|publisher=Sherwood, Neely&Jones}}
• Memoirs of the Public Life of John Horne Tooke, 1812{{cite book|author=William Hamilton Reid|title=Memoirs of the Public Life of John Horne Tooke |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-SFcAAAAcAAJ|year=1812}}
• Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, translator, 1826, from Antoine-Vincent Arnault, Charles-Joseph Panckoucke and Louis Philippe, comte de Ségur{{cite book|author=Antoine-Vincent Arnault|title=Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte: with copious historical illustrations and original anecdotes|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wJ_SAAAAMAAJ|year=1826|publisher=Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper}}

The New Sanhedrin (1806/7),סנהדרין חדשה and Causes and Consequences of the French Emperor's conduct towards the Jews: including official documents, and the final decisions of the Grand Sanhedrin. ... By an Advocate of the House of Israel attributed to Reid, was prompted by the summoning of the Grand Sanhedrin, and advocated in favour of Jewish emancipation. It draws on arguments found in Isaac La Peyrère, Thomas Beverley (died 1702) and Francis Lee; but also in Priestley's Letters to the Jews (1794).{{cite book|author=William Hamilton Reid|title=סנהדרין חדשה and Causes and Consequences of the French Emperor's conduct towards the Jews: including official documents, and the final decisions of the Grand Sanhedrin. ... By an Advocate of the House of Israel [i.e. W. H. Reid?].|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sUBVAAAAcAAJ|year=1807|publisher=M. Jones}} Reid adopted philosemitic views as a follower of Napoleon's attitude. He went on to write controversially against Samuel Horsley, invoking older ideas of Gilbert Burnet, Pierre Jurieu and Joseph Mede, and the Jewish writers Isaac Abravanel and David Levi. He and others holding related opinions, such as the Baptist James Bicheno, were attacked by the Jewish Conversion Society.

• Sentimental Beauties from the Writings of the Late Dr. Hugh Blair, 1809.{{cite book|title=Sentimental Beauties from the Writings of the Late Dr. Hugh Blair: Including the Latest Editions of His Sermons, Lectures, &c. &c. : Alphabetically Arranged : with a Copious Account of the Life and Writings of the Author, Carefully Abridged from the Larger Editions of the Late John Hill, LL. D. and Dr. Finlayson|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d0IUYAAACAAJ|year=1809|publisher=Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme}} Hugh Blair has been taken by McCalman to be an early influence on Reid.{{cite book|author1=Steve Clark|author2=David Worrall|title=Historicizing Blake|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vTywCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA38|date=31 December 2015|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|isbn=978-1-349-23477-6|page=28}}
• A Concise History of the Kingdom of Hanover from the earliest periods until its restoration in 1813, 1816. The politically sensitive topic of the Hanoverian and Brunswick genealogical background had been dormant since work of Henry Rimius in 1750. Reid's book was followed in the 19th century by those of Andrew Halliday (1826) and Percy Thornton (1887).{{cite journal |last1=Womersley |first1=David |title=Gibbon's Unfinished History: The French Revolution and English Political Vocabularies |journal=The Historical Journal |date=1992 |volume=35 |issue=1 |pages=63–89 |doi=10.1017/S0018246X00025619 |jstor=2639480 |s2cid=144491230 }}

Some of Reid's compiled works were published anonymously. A satirical play, The Democrat Cured, is not extant.{{cite book|author=David Worrall|title=Theatric Revolution: Drama, Censorship, and Romantic Period Subcultures 1773-1832|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F8gSDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4|date=18 May 2006|publisher=OUP Oxford|isbn=978-0-19-927675-2|page=4}} Walks Through London (1817), published under the name David Hughson, which has been attributed to Reid, and to his wife, was by Edward Pugh (died 1813), according to Samuel Halkett and John Laing.{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/stream/dictionaryofanon00halk#page/n105/mode/1up|title=A Dictionary of the Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature of Great Britain. Including the works of foreigners written in, or translated into the English language|last1=Halkett|first1=Samuel|last2=Laing|first2=John|year=1888|via=Internet Archive|publisher=William Patterson|page=2785|accessdate=6 May 2016|location=Edinburgh}}

{{Reflist}}

• Obituary: {{cite book|title=The Gentleman's Magazine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KclDAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA184|year=1826|publisher=E. Cave|pages=184–6}}
• [http://www.eng-poetry.ru/english/Poet.php?PoetId=468 Poems by William Hamilton Reid] at English Poetry

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Category:1826 deaths

Category:British poets

Category:Writers from London

Category:Year of birth unknown