[ Everard Meynell and his 'Serendipity Shop': catalogue by J. & E. Bumpus Ltd. ] Catalogue of the Books of the Late Everard Meynell including the most interesting items from his "Serendipity Shop".

120 pages (unpaginated), 12mo. Stitched without covers. In fair condition: worn (particularly the first two leaves) and aged. A marvellous collection, described in a carefully printed and compiled catalogue of 901 lots. A two-page 'Prefatory Note' has a long quotation from one of Meynell's catalogues, beginning: 'My books must at my death be turned to account. What I have to fear (and what I hereby forbid) is that they should be offered as a whole to some insensitive dealer who judges a collection by its bindings, its look of prosperity, the presence of those standard 'rarities' that are to be had from every expensive bookseller and found in every wealthy man's library.' Following the quotation Bumpus (i.e. Wilson) points out that 'Into a large number of entries in this list have been introduced the phrases by which Everard Meynell characterised the book in question in his own notes of his stock and library.' Divided into two roughly equal parts: 'Books written before 1800' and 'Books, Mss. and Letters written after 1800'. The latter include sections of Browning, Coleridge, Coventry Patmore and Rossetti associations. There are also long descriptions of a number of AlsS to Patmore: nine from Robert Bridges (£25); three from Robert Browning and his wife (eighteen guineas); five from Thomas Carlyle (£70); Gerard Manley Hopkins (lots 651 to 655); Francis Thompson (lots 880 to 882); Tennyson (lots 864 and 865); and six letters from Lady Tennyson to Mrs Patmore (eight guineas). Among the single letters offered are items by Mary Shelley (ten guineas) and Robert Louis Stevenson (£65). Scarce: only two copies on OCLC WorldCat.