Search results

Author, Title, Summary Subject Price
[John William Ramsay (1847-1887), 13th Earl of Dalhousie, Lord in Waiting in Gladstone's Liberal Government, 1880-1885] [Farrer; Kilmorey; Kinnaird; Kinnoull; Montrose; Strafford; Wharncliffe]

Seven letters to Lord Dalhousie, as Lord in Waiting [whip] in the House of Lords, from peers, regarding the second reading of a bill entitled 'Marriage with the Sister of a Deceased Wife'.

According to the diarist Sir Edward Walter Hamilton, the second reading of the Divorced Wife's Sister Bill caused 'great excitement'. Due to clerical opposition, the Bill did not reach the statute book until 1907, and even then in a limited form. These seven items provide an interesting glimpse...

Women £280.00
Horace Smith] Horatio Smith, poet.

[Horatio/Horace Smith] Autograph Note Signed to Lady Stepney accepting an invitation to dinner.

One page, 12mo, crupled but text clear and complete: "I shall have very great pleasure in diding with your Ladyship on Monday next - & some of the Ladies will be most happy to follow me in the evening. [...]" Note: joint author of 'Rejected Addresses'.

Literature £45.00
John Carrick Moore (1805-98), geologist

[Geologist] Autograph Letter Signed "John Carrick Moore" to Lady Eastlake, born Elizabeth Rigby, author, art critic and art historian, on W.E. Gladstone's scholarship [Prime Minister].

Four pages, 12mo, closely written, good condition. "Your approval of my criticism on the '[?] of Hector' has greatly gratified me. Gladstone is twenty fold a better Grecian than S.C.M., but he is crochetty, and a crochetty man sees what no one else sees, and refuses to see the palpable. I have...

Literature £80.00
[John] Sudlow, engraver and printer (BBTI)

Trade card.

c.3 x 4.5, creased and slightly soiled. Re. BBTI in Market Street in 1824 - further detail to add.

Printing History £28.00
[Jonathan Blewitt (1782-1853), English composer] [The Flying Dutchman]

Handbill poem entitled 'Baron Böhmbig [Bohmbig], or the Rival Jumpers.'

Printed on one side of a piece of wove paper, 32.5 x 24 cm. Text clear and complete, on aged paper with chipping and closed tears to edges. The only copy of this title on COPAC is at the British Library (folio, 4 pp, published by Zenas T. Purday), where it is ascribed to Blewitt and tentatively...

History £75.00
Sir Frederick Pollock [Sir Jonathan Frederick Pollock] (1783-1870), 1st Baronet, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and Tory Attorney General [Sir Thomas Baring (1799-1873); General Jonathan Peel]

[‘the Leap in the Dark’: Sir Frederick Pollock on the Second Reform Act.] Autograph Letter Signed (‘Fred Pollock’) to Sir Thomas Baring on General Jonathan Peel’s resignation over the Second Reform Act, which he calls‘this downward movement’.

See the entries for Pollock, Peel and Baring in the Oxford DNB. 3pp, 12mo. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged, with traces of mount adhering to blank reverse of second leaf. Folded twice. Addressed to ‘My dear Baring’. He begins by thanking him for his ‘introductions - & the kindness...

£45.00
Charles Haddon Chambers [Charles Haddon Spurgeon Chambers] (1860-1921), Australian dramatist who settled in England, where he had an affair with Dame Nellie Melba

[Charles Haddon Chambers, Australian dramatist in England, lover of Dame Nellie Melba.] Autograph Letter Signed to ‘B. C.’, on subects including his performance with Herbert Beerbohm Tree before Queen Victoria at Balmoral.

Chambers is not mentioned in Dame Nellie Melba’s entry in the Oxford DNB. She met him in London in 1895, and their affair ended for unknown reasons in 1904. It is clearly the ‘notorious’ affair in whose fame Chambers ‘rejoiced to the last’, according to Somerset Maugham’s devastating assessment...

£80.00
John Buchan, novelist, later Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor-General of Canada

Typed Note Signed "J. Buchan" to Arthur Poyser, City of London Boy Scouts (first ever Troop by some accounts, inspired by Baden Powell's 1907 experiment), re-founder of the City of London Boy Players.

With printed pamphlet. Letter is one page, 12mo, tipped on to page extracted from personal album of Arthur Poyser, trimmed to fit a plastci envelope, with a small nick not affecting text, illustrating his career with the City of London Boy Scouts and the Boy Players (album offered separately)....

Literature, Social history £175.00
[Mandalay; Burma; Myanmar]

Manuscript letter from 'Mummie' to 'Babsie', consisting of a long description in English of Burma from a visiting mother to her daughter.

12mo, 15 pp. On watermarked laid paper. Very good, with slight wear to crease on first leaf damaging two words (both still legible). Otherwise text clear and complete. The item can be dated from a reference to 'a Dempsey-Tunney fight'. Although neatly written, the handwriting is so stylised that...

Travel and Topography £65.00
[MANUSCRIPT] Anon.

"Whitby. / List of £100 Freeholders"

Five pages, folio, folded, good condition. A list of 141 names and addresses, a few with a line through, ticks or crosses at the side of many, and the letters "C" or "L". Names include the Marquis of Normandy, the Earl of Zetland, Vicars, women (inc. "The Hon. Miss Dawney") and others (no...

Social history £105.00