QUESTIONNAIRE

[‘I don’t much like the idea of sniping at my fellow writers’: Peter Quennell, biographer and historian.] Autograph Letter Signed to Philip Dosse, publisher of ‘Books and Bookmen’, declining to ‘co-operate’ with his ‘questionnaire’.

Author: 
Peter Quennell [Sir Peter Courtney Quennell] (1905-1993), biographer, historian and founding co-editor of ‘History Today’ [Philip Dosse (1925-1980), publisher of ‘Books and Bookmen’]
Publication details: 
4 December 1973; on his joint letterhead with Alan Hodge as co-editor of ‘History Today’, London.
£56.00

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. The recipient Philip Dosse was proprietor of Hansom Books, publisher of a stable of seven arts magazines including Books and Bookmen and Plays and Players. See ‘Death of a Bookman’ by the novelist Sally Emerson (editor of ‘Books and Bookmen’ at the time of Dosse’s suicide), in Standpoint magazine, October 2018. The present item is 1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged and creased. Folded once for postage. Signed ‘Peter Quennell’. He ‘can’t co-operate’ with the questionnaire that Dosse has sent him.

[ Samuel Lewis, topographer. ] Printed prospectus, questionnaire and list of 'Subscribers in London': 'Preparing for publication, | By S. Lewis, | A Topographical Dictionary of England, | From a Personal Survey through every Parish in the Kingdom'.

Author: 
Samuel Lewis (c.1782-1865), topographer and publisher
Publication details: 
12, Devereaux-court, Temple, London. [Late 1820s.]
£200.00

4pp., folio. Bifolium. In fair condition, on lightly aged paper and creased paper, with slight damage to margins at foot of both leaves. Beneath the heading on the first page is a list of around 75 princes, dukes and lords, headed by 'His Most Gracious Majesty the King', under whose 'immediate patronage' the work is to be commenced. Beneath this, in small type is the prospectus, stressing the 'immense Labour and Expense' attending the work (Lewis later claimed had taken six years to compile it, at an outlay of £48,000), which is to be 'published in Four Volumes Quarto - Price 30s.

[ John Braddick of Boughton Mount ] Long manuscript responses to a questionnaire in a prospectus titled 'Preparing for publication, | By S. Lewis, | A Topographical Dictionary of England, | From a Personal Survey through every Parish in the Kingdom'

Author: 
John Braddick of Boughton Mount, Monchelsea, Kent, slave trader; Samuel Lewis (c.1782-1865), topographer and publisher
Publication details: 
Prospectus published from 12, Devereaux-court, Temple, London. [Late 1820s.]
£400.00

The prospectus is 4pp., folio. Bifolium. In fair condition, on lightly aged paper and creased paper, with slight damage to margins at foot of both leaves. Beneath the heading on the first page is a list of around 75 princes, dukes and lords, headed by 'His Most Gracious Majesty the King', under whose 'immediate patronage' the work is to be commenced.

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