HECTOR

[Kenneth Hopkins, poet, critic and crime writer.] ‘Three Sonnets’ by Kenneth Hopkins in ‘The Grasshopper Broadsheets’ series of publications, with Signed Autograph Inscription to London bookseller Andrew Block.

Author: 
Kenneth Hopkins [Hector Kenneth Hopkins] (1914-1988), poet, critic and crime writer [Andrew Block, London bookseller]
Publication details: 
‘Number Three. Third Series. March, 1944.’ ‘Printed by Bacon & Hudson, Ltd., Derby, and published by Kenneth Hopkins, 670, Osmaston Road, Derby.’
£56.00

See Hopkins’s entry in the Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. His papers are in the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas. The obituary of the recipient Andrew Block (1892-1987) in ‘The Private Library’ was subtitled ‘the doyen of booksellers’; his business was established in 1911. Printed on one side of a foolscap 8vo leaf. A tasteful piece of provincial printing. Worn, creased and dog-eared, with closed tears at head. Inscribed at bottom-right: ‘for Andrew Block / Kenneth Hopkins’. Titled ‘THREE SONNETS’ and signed in type ‘KENNETH HOPKINS’.

Typed Letter Signed ('Hector Charlesworth') from the Canadian writer Hector Willoughby Charlesworth to the English diplomat Ernest Francis Gye, concerning Mme Albani, the latter's mother,

Author: 
Hector Charlesworth [Hector Willoughby Charlesworth] (1872-1945), Canadian writer [Dame Emma Albani (1847-1930), Canadian soprano; Ernest Frederick Gye (1879-1955), diplomat]
Publication details: 
On his Toronto letterhead; 1 June 1945.
£90.00

1 p, 4to. 20 lines. Text clear and complete. Fair, on aged and creased paper. In response to a letter from Gye states that he did not hear Albani sing 'until her last two Canadian tours when she was approaching 50', when he 'thought her best in her singing of Mozart, which revealed her rare vocal finesse'. Charlesworth was told by the 'late Edwin R. Parkhurst, a Toronto music critic, 30 years my senior who had heard her frequently in his younger days in London', that 'these appearances gave no adequate idea of how glorious her voice had been in the seventies'.

Album containing 112 well-executed pen and ink drawings by the French nineteenth-century artist H. Du Chene de Vere [H. Duchene de Vere].

Author: 
H. Du Chene de Vere [H. Duchene de Vere], French nineteenth-century painter
H. Du Chene de Vere [H. Duchene de Vere], French nineteenth-century painter
Publication details: 
All undated [1850s?]. Captions may indicate that the drawings were executed in France, Italy and England.
£1,200.00
H. Du Chene de Vere [H. Duchene de Vere], French nineteenth-century painter

4to album of 33 leaves, with the 112 illustrations each on a separate piece of paper, and all laid down on 59 of the album's 66 leaves (the blank leaves of the album bearing traces of other illustrations having been removed). The illustrations range in size from 19 x 15.5 cm to 6 x 3 cm, with the average around 15 x 11 cm. The album's brown cloth covers are faded and worn, but internally the album is sound, with the illustrations themselves in good condition, on lightly-aged paper. Around twenty are signed, half with the spelling 'Duchene' and the other half 'Du Chene'.

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