MARLETT

[Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.] 37 items, including 21 ALsS from librarian W. S. Brassington to one of the Theatre’s governors, Dr E. M. Boddy, regarding his gift of portraits to Shakespeare Memorial, and resulting disagreement.

Author: 
Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon [William Salt Brassington (1859-1939), archaeologist; Evan Marlett Boddy (c.1847-1934), FRCS; Stewart Dick; Edgar Flower; Archibald Flower]
Publication details: 
20 of Brassington’s 21 letters from between 1899 and 1902, and on letterheads of Shakespeare Memorial, Stratford-upon-Avon; the other is from 1910. Among the other items are ones dated from between 1899 and 1928.
£650.00

The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre was founded through the efforts of local brewer Charles Edward Flower (1830-1892), after whose death its management was taken over by his brother Edgar Flower (1833-1903), also Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. On Edgar’s death these duties fell to his son Archibald Flower (1865-1950), several times mayor of Stratford-upon-Avon. The present correspondence concerns a gift to Shakespeare Memorial Association by the appropriately-named anatomist Evan Marlett Boddy.

[Sir Arthur Hodgson, Australian squatter and politician.] Autograph Letter in the third person, thanking ‘Marcian’ [Evan Marlett Boddy?] for his ‘brochure’ ‘Relics of the late William Shakespeare’.

Author: 
Sir Arthur Hodgson (1818-1902), Australian squatter and politician involved in the deaths of hundreds of aborigines, and later Mayor of Stratford-upon-Avon [Evan Marlett Boddy (c.1847-1934)]
Publication details: 
1 September [1901]. On embossed letterhead of Clopton House, Stratford-on-Avon.
£60.00

Hodgson’s entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography omits to mention the fact that the territory named Eton Vale which he squatted with his brother Christopher Pemberton Hodgson (1821-1865), was taken by force from the Barunggam people, and that, as the brother recalled in 1848, ‘so many hundreds of these poor creatures’ were ‘sacrificed’ in the struggle over the territory. From the papers of Evan Marlett Boddy (c.1847-1934), who is presumably the recipient ‘Marcian’, author of the named ‘brochure’, published in Birmingham in 1901. 1p, 12mo. In good condition, folded once.

[Percy Bysshe Shelley: supposed portrait by George Romney.] Five Autograph Letters Signed from William Salt Brassington, Librarian of the Shakespeare Memorial, to the donor of the picture Evan Marlett Boddy.

Author: 
[Percy Bysshe Shelley; George Romney] William Salt Brassington, archaeologist and librarian of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon; Evan Marlett Boddy; Richard Garnett
Publication details: 
Three of the five from 1900 (28 and 31 August, and 4 September); and two from 1901 (5 and 13 December). All on letterheads of the Shakespeare Memorial, Stratford-upon-Avon.
£450.00

These five items are part of a collection of correspondence (the rest is offered separately) relating to a supposed portrait of a young Percy Bysshe Shelley by George Romney, which was in a group of paintings donated to the Shakespeare Memorial Association by the appropriately-named anatomist Evan Marlett Boddy. (The Shelley portrait is reproduced in ‘The Magazine of Art’, 1901, with the caption ‘Reputed portrait of Shelley as a boy, by Romney. In the Shakespeare memorial, Stratford-on-Avon.’, in an article on ‘Portraits of Shelley at the National Portrait Gallery’, p.

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