[Hall Caine, novelist: studio portrait and signed autograph inscription.] Signed Autograph Inscription ('Hall Caine') to Lady Campbell Clarke, with print of studio portrait photograph.

An attractive item, in good condition, lightly aged and spotted. On one side of a piece of 17.5 x 25 cm landscape paper, with the autograph writing on the right-hand side and the 15 x 10 cm print of a studio portrait laid down on the left-hand side. Caine was a striking and instantly-recognisable individual, and the photograph shows him in characteristic style, bare-headed in his usual dress of long double-breasted coat with white cravat, staring intently at the camera, with a book in his right hand, and his right hand draped across his left thigh, his left leg being elevated on a chair. The inscription is signed 'Hall Caine | 9/ Nov 1905.', and is headed 'To | Lady Campbell Clarke.' Clearly in response to a request for an autograph, Caine has written out a celebrated four-line stanza from Tennyson's 'In Memoriam', beginning 'I hold it truth with him who sings'. The photograph is possibly the one taken by George Charles Beresford in 1904; it is certainly not one of the other 25 images of Caine in the National Portrait Gallery collection. Lady Campbell Clarke was part of the circle of Caine and his friend Bram Stoker, author of Dracula.