LITERATURE, HISTORY AND EXPLORATION


Collection, contained in several albums and loose in folders, comprising autograph letters etc. by Dickens (autograph envelope front, signed, to his publisher Chapman, 1861), Wilkie Collins, J.S. Mill (regarding a printed letter about competition for public appointment, with which he agrees "very strongly and with deep conviction", 1869), Sir Walter Scott, Sir John Franklin (note of parole words, signed, issued during the Greek War of Independence, 20 April 1832), Ferdinand Lesseps (signed photograph and letter), David Livingstone (initialled envelope front, to Waller), Sir Samuel Baker ("...I forgot to order a small hand folding table for tent..."), Alfred Tennyson (with attestation by his son Hallam "The letter is in my mothers hand writing – the signature is written by my father"), his brother Frederick (about his poem 'Troublous Times' foretelling apocalypse), Conan Doyle (two, one from the Pyramids, the other advising that "If you are cycling to London we are on your route"), Thackeray (letter in both his hands), Holman Hunt, Ruskin, Millais, De Morgan and other leading Victorian artists, Victor Hugo, Garibaldi and Mazzini, Messrs Boulton & Watt (fragment), Thomas Coutts, Samuel Smiles ("...some inaccuracies in Vol II of Lives of the Engineers..."), Allan Cunningham ("...Will you come and breakfast with us... and meet Sir Walter Scott and Mr Lockhart?..."), William Beckford (from Fonthill Abbey), Walter Scott (reading notes), Hannah Moore (written after a visit to Hampton in 1786: "Mrs Garrick... is not a little proud of your predisposition in her favour"), Sir Arthur Sullivan ("...He is well aware that the word should be pronounced hareem..."), Charles Kingsley, Sir Rowland Hill (of Penny Post fame), William Pitt the Younger ("...I send you a very delightful Arabian Tale, to the Merit of which however Truth will be more material than to most Compositions of that Name..."), Joseph Banks, Benjamin Disraeli (to the second Duke of Wellington – "I write this on the scene of battle"), Lord Derby ("...the idea of a Monolith Obelisk as a Memorial to the later Prince Consort has long been abandoned..."), Lord Rosse the Younger (about his brother's "Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Co"), Rudyard Kipling (presentation signature), Slatin Pasha, Harrison Ainsworth, Bret Harte, Lady Blessington, Napoleon III, Bram Stoker, Katharine Tynan (verse), Charles Kingsley, first Duke of Wellington (cheque, bill and letter), Cardigan (of Light Brigade fame), Mrs Ward (about her novel Marcella), William Thomson Lord Kelvin (4), Anthony Gell, Receiver of Westminster Abbey (writing to R.B. Sheridan concerning the funeral [of C.J. Fox] the following day, 9 October 1806), Thomas Clarkson, a Commissioner at Calcutta ("...I return your suggested draft letter to Mr Gandhi, which cannot do any harm although I am afraid it will not do much good with a man who is beyond all reasoning..."), Lord Courtney ("...will be obliged to Mr: Broadwood to send him down a Set of Springs for his small Piano forté..."), Derwent Coleridge ("...I regret that all available autographs of S.T.C. were parted with many years ago – before indeed they came into my possession...", 1862), royalty, nobility and others, the principal album half calf, upper cover stamped 'Autographs', bookplate of John Coubrough of Blanefield, covers loose, oblong folio, principally nineteenth century (4)