AUTOGRAPH

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged, with slight discoloration at one edge and minor repair on reverse. Addressed to ‘Dear Mrs. Bicknell’ and signed ‘Danl. Maclise’. Reads ‘I very much regret to say that I have accepted an invitation to dinner on Wednesday when I might have had the pleasure of repairing to Tulse Hill and perhaps in company with my friend and your father whom I sometimes dare to call David’.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. Ingram's biography of Poe was responsible for his reabilitation, and his extensive collection of material relating to the writer is now in the University of Virginia. Entire small envelope (roughly 12 x 7 cm), self-printed with stamp. In good condition, lightly aged, with flap at back torn in opening of letter. With postmarks at front and back of the envelope, both dated 9 January 1875; front postmark from Malvern and back one from West Malvern. Addressed by Swinburne to ‘John H. Ingram Esq.

See the entries on Nightingale, Hall and Herbert in the Oxford DNB. The Nightingale Fund was established in the Crimea on 29 November 1855, to raise money for the training of nurses. As a result of discussions held at the time of this circular the money from the Fund was used to set up the first nursing school, the Nightingale Training School, at St Thomas’s Hospital in 1860. ONE: Printed circular in form of a facsimile ALS from ‘S. C. Hall / Hon. Sec.’ 1p, 8vo. On first leaf of a bifolium. In fair condition, lightly aged and worn. Twenty-four lines of text.

Written with the charm for which she was renowned. See her entry and his in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 4to, on two leaves of cartridge paper. In good condition lightly aged. Folded twice for postage. Mostly written in pencil, with good firm signature (‘Yrs / Diana Cooper’) and last few lines in red ink. Begins: ‘My dear admiral - Forgive the scruffiness of the paper & the rudeness of a pencil but I’m in an unoccupied house & can find no essentials, tho’ I found y. letter to-day & have no idea when it was posted.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 4to. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded twice for postage. Reads: ‘Dear Mr Scarr: / I’m sorry but I have already engaged myself for three talks besides my offical three and, not being an extemporizer, can’t undertake any more. / Yours sincerely / Robert Graves’. See Image.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. The two items were previously held together by a small dab of glue at the head of the letter. They are now separated, and traces of the glue remain, not affecting any text. Otherwise they are in good condition, lightly aged. ONE: ALS, 30 December 1932. 1p, 12mo. Signed Hugh Walpole. He thanks him for his charming ‘Carol’: ‘I have been picking it out on the piano. And I send back the photo autographed. With every good wish for 1933’.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. Both items are somewhat sunned, but in good overall condition. ONE: ALS. 1p, 4to. Folded three times for postage. Signed ‘John Masefield’.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. Hamilton was a keen Latinist, even translating one of his Greyfriars stories into the language. 1p, 4to. In good condition, lightly aged and worn, with two corners dogeared. Folded for postage. Good firm signature at bottom left: ‘Frank Richards’.

An excellent letter, casting light on one of the milestones of the English poetic canon. See his entry, and hers, in the Oxford DNB. ‘The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language’ appeared in 1861, and it remains, as J. W. Mackail wrote in the original DNB, 'one of those rare instances in which a critical work has substantive imaginative value, and entitles its author to rank among creative artists'.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. At the time of writing Bates was employed in writing short stories as propaganda for the Air Ministry. 1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once. Signed ‘H. E. Bates’.He begins by thanking him for sending a print, and is sorry he could not reply before: ‘like so many other people I have been ill & in bed’. He is keeping the print and enclosing five pounds. ‘Next time I come to Leicester I hope to have time to come in & make your acquaintance.’ He ends by asking him to look out for books on ‘collecting old silver’ for him.

See Wheatley's entry in the Oxford DNB. In good condition, lightly aged. The aquatint bookplate, in black and white, is 10.5 x 14.5 cm (plate dimensions 9 x 12.5 cm). It was designed by Wheatley himself, and is everything you would hope from a writer in his field. A naked Wheatley, with slicked-back 1920s hairstyle, sits at the feet of a cloven-footed devil (Wheatley’s mentor G. Eric Gordon-Tombe, and the man he is alleged to have murdered) under the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. The three items are in good condition, each with his firm signature ‘Compton Mackenzie’. Each is 1p, 4to, in good condition, folded for postage.Despite being scored through, one can see that the first and last salutation are addressed to ‘Mrs Raymont’, and the second to ‘Mr Raymond’. ONE: 23 November 1961. He is pleased that she enjoyed his book ‘Mezzotint’: ‘The setting is really the Seychelles but of course I had to lay it in the South Atlantic instead of the Indian Ocean.’ He agrees with her ‘about these efforts at modernity by some of my contemporaries.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. An unillustrated post card, apart from the letterhead. Addressed, with stamp and Paddington postmark, to ‘Dr William Roberts / Briarlea / Mortimer / Berks.’ The message reads: ‘I vote for Osbert S. [i.e. Osbert Sitwell] as next chairman Soc. Authors [etc?] / Yrs / C. Day Lewis’. Image on request.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. The recipient is presumably the lyricist Peter Claremont Parsons. Plain postcard, apart from letterhead. In good condition, lightly aged. Image on request.Postmarked (from Paddington), stamped and addressed to ‘Geoffrey Parsons esq. / 22 Westbourne Park Road / W.2’. Small signature: ‘C. D. L.’ Reads: ‘Many thanks for Peter’s Progress. [Parson’s poetry book, published that year by Hand & Flower] I’ve read it with great pleasure & amusement, & fallen foul of little except ‘legacies’ rhyming with exegesis. My memory of those H. & S.

See the two men’s entries in the Oxford DNB. If, as Geoffrey Wheatcroft states in Waugh’s, he ‘liked to play the reactionary’, these two letters show that he started playing the game during his schooldays. They are both in good condition, lightly aged and folded for postage. Both carry two punch holes for a binder, the autograph letter lacking the word ‘on’ as a result. Both are signed ‘Auberon Waugh’. ONE: ALS, 7 May [1955]. 2pp, 4to. The recipient is not named, but is clearly AKG. He begins by claiming that he has ‘read every edition of your magazine and can not [sic] praise it too highly.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. See his entry in the Oxford DNB. Sneyd-Kinnersley is the headmaster who is alleged to have subjected a naked seven-year-old Winston Churchill to repeated beatings. 3pp, 12mo. With mourning border. Letterhead (no doubt designed by Waterhouse himself) in characteristic style. On grey paper. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once for postage. Good expansive signature ‘A Waterhouse’, and the letter written in a stylish hand. Addressed to ‘The Rev: H. W Sneyd Kinnersley’.

See the two men’s entries in the Oxford DNB. In good condition, on the first leaf of bifolium. (There are extensive pencil annotations in a later hand on the second leaf.) Very neatly written. Addressed to ‘J. G. Wilson Esqre.’ and signed ‘Anstey Guthrie’. He has ‘much pleasure’ in answering Wilson’s question. ‘‘Shut Out’ is a short story of mine which was published in Longmans Magazine about 1895 or 6, afterwards included in a volume of short stories under the title of “The Talking Horse”. I think published by Messrs. Smith & Elder - but now long out of print.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. The present item was enclosed in a letter from Serjeant Shee (the future Sir William Shee), offered separately, sent from the House of Commons on 17 February 1854, in which he writes: ‘I enclose Mr. Cobdens own handwriting to send to the Papers -’. Attached to a corner at the head of the first page of the present item is a cutting from the Morning Herald newspaper, 18 February 1854, reproducing the details in the manuscript.

According to his entry in the Oxford DNB, Shee entered the House of Commons as Member for County Kilkenny in 1852, and promptly took charge of the Irish Tenant Right Bill. ‘On 16 February 1854 Shee brought in a bill which, with the exception of three clauses, was the exact counterpart of Sharman Crawford's bill of the previous session, but it met with little encouragement.’ Shee’s speech is reproduced in his ‘Papers, Letters, and Speeches in the House of Commons, on the Irish Land Question’ (London, 1863).

27 February 1975. On letterhead of the Committee for Peace in the Middle East. From the papers of Philip Dosse (1925-1980), 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; and Michael Barber, 'What was Books and Bookmen?', Literary Review blog, 18 August 2023. 1p, 4to. In fair condition, lightly aged and worn. Folded twice. Reads: ‘Dear Mr.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. Lightly aged and worn. With central horizontal and vertical crease for postage, each quarter with double pinholes at the centre (from attachment of an enclosure?). Signature unaffected (it starts close to vertical crease). Reads: 'Dear Mrs. Lord / With the greatest pleasure - and with ten thousand apologies. I thought I had answered long ago. But letters lie in heaps in my tray & on my table - everywhere! and I carry them about in bags labelled carefully Unanswered until I dare no longer look inside.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 12mo. Eighteen lines, closely written. On creased grey paper, with short closed tear at edge of central crease. The year 1944 has been added in another hand. Addressed to ‘Dear Mr. Macdermid’ and signed ‘Michael Redgrave’. He is grateful to him for the suggestion that he ‘should be an Hon. Associate Member of your Club, to which I wish every success’, but feels ‘rather strongly that I must not put my name to anything more than I can actively take part in - even if activity is confined to letter writing etc.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB: ‘In the 1840s Peto had thirty-three railway contracts worth £20 million, the largest number held in the kingdom; according to Brunel he was the largest contractor in the world.’ 2pp, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded three times. Begins: ‘Sir Morton Peto presents his Compliments to Lady Hooker and begs to acknowledge the receipt of her not of the 9th. Inst. on his return from the Continent’. He regrets that ‘it will not be in his power to assist the Case of Dr.

See the two men’s entries in the Oxford DNB. The material is in good condition, lightly aged, except that the envelopes of the first two items are somewhat worn and grubby. ONE: TLS to Douglas C. Dorrington. 1p, 12mo. The address to ‘Dear Mr. Dorrington’ and signature ‘Peter Pears’ are in autograph; the rest is typed. Written while Britten is dying. Reads: ‘Benjamin Britten wishes me to thank you for your kind message.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB, and those of his children the writers John Lehmann and Rosamond Lehmann. 1p, 12mo, with mourning border. In fair condition, on aged paper. Folded once, and with biographical information in small type at head. Addressed to ‘Messrs. Henry & Co’, publishers of his recently published book: ‘Dear Sirs / I am obliged for the two Copies of “In Cambridge Courts” which you sent me. Will you kindly send my further Copies to me at / 15 Berkeley Square / London W. / May I take this opportunity of congratulating you on the get up of the book. It is charming.’

On a 12 x 6.5 cm piece of paper. In fair condition, lightly discoloured and spotted, with traces of paper from mount on reverse. Central vertical crease. A neat, tight inscription, clearly in response to a request for an autograph, reading, ‘Sincerely / Milton Sills’. Image on request.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. Both items in good condition, lightly aged, on grey paper, with central horizontal fold. Each signed ‘Aston Webb’. ONE: ANS to ‘Dear Walter Spiers’, 27 March 1899. 1p, 16mo. Thanking him for his congratulations on his election. TWO: ALS to ‘Dear Mr Baldwin’, 20 June 1903. 1p, 12mo. After thanking him for his congratulation he continues: ‘We had a most delightful dinner with you the other evening.’

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 12mo. On first leaf of bifolium. In fair condition, lightly aged. Folded twice, with spots of discoloration around the creases and slight nick at head of leaf. On monogram (Order of the Bath?) letterhead with motto ‘Tria juncta in uno’. Addressed to ‘Dear Mr. Townshend’ and signed ‘Clements R Markham’. Acknowledging receipt ‘of a paper by your brother-in-law Mr.

See his entry, together with that of Benjamin Britten, in the Oxford DNB, the latter explaining the context of the last letter, which is an attack on Britten and Peter Pears for not returning from the United States to wartime England. From the Scott papers. Each letter 2pp, 12mo, on a single leaf (a total of 8pp, 12mo). In good condition, lightly aged. Each letter folded for postage. All four letters addressed to ‘Miss Scott’, and each signed ‘Gordon Jacob’. ONE (1 April 1929): He will be ‘most delighted’ to give her ‘any information you may require about my work’.

Reade was a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1836 to his death. According to his entry in the Oxford DNB: ‘in the years of his fame, and particularly in the early 1860s, he did much of his writing in his rooms at Magdalen, using them as a retreat. His tenure of the fellowship was contingent on his remaining unmarried, a stipulation he complained of bitterly but continued to put up with, even when he was earning thousands a year as a writer’. 1p, 12mo. In fair condition, lightly discoloured, on thin wove paper. Folded once.