Some Reminiscences and Reflections on Collecting Autographs.

Author: 
Charles King Wadham [autograph collecting; Yale University Press]
Publication details: 
Dalton, Massachusetts: Maisonette. ['Privately printed, The Printing-Office of the Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, March 1931'.]
£45.00
SKU: 5861

Octavo: 32 pp. Stitched. In original printed wraps. Internally clean and tight, but wraps dogeared and grubby, with closed tear and pen mark. Tissue-guarded frontispiece of Wadham, with small dogear to top corner (not affecting image). Facsimile of Whittier's autograph. Read before the 'Saturday Evening Club of Dalton'. 'My collection today is so comprehensive [sic] that I have no hesitation in soliciting the most distinguished personages; in fact, I feel that I am conferring an honor rather than offering an insult in asking them. Recollections of his encounters with Longfellow, Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Tyndall, Bryant, Horace Greeley. Paragraph describing his failure to obtain Dickens's autograph ('I had at least the opportunity of shaking his hand'). 'Many of my friends are interested to know what disposition I intend to make of my collection. I propose to leave it to some Art Museum or Library, that posterity may thereafter have free access to it.' What became of Wadham's collection is unclear. No copy on COPAC.