ORTON

[‘The Tichborne Claimant’: the soi-disant Sir Roger Charles Doughty-Tichborne, held to be an imposter named Arthur Orton.] Signed Autograph inscription as ‘R. C. D. Tichborne’, with Signed Autograph inscription by Major-General Arthur Phelps.

Author: 
‘The Tichborne Claimant’ (d.1898): the soi-disant Sir Roger Charles Doughty-Tichborne (b.1829), held to be an imposter named Arthur Orton (b.1834); Major-General Arthur Phelps (1837-1920), Indian Army
‘The Tichborne Claimant’
Publication details: 
Inscription by the Tichborne Claimant dated 6 March 1893. Inscription by Phelps dated 9 December 1890.
£160.00
‘The Tichborne Claimant’

The Tichborne Case was very possibly the greatest scandal of Victorian England. See the entry for ‘Tichborne claimant’, with subheading for ‘Arthur Orton’ in the Oxford DNB. Trained as a civil engineer, Major-General Arthur Phelps (1837-1920), civil engineer, was a prominent homeopath, anti-vaccinationist, and anti-vivisectionist, who promoted his views as proprietor and editor of the Citizen newspaper. Each inscription is on one side of a single 11.5 x 18.5 cm piece of gilt-edged wove paper, presumably extracted from an autograph album.

'Box Office Return' for a production of 'She Stoops to Conquer' at 'The Arts Theatre Club Festival of International Comedy and Drama', filled in by hand on printed form by Mary Pupley, Box Office Keeper.

Author: 
The Arts Theatre Club, London [Mary Pupley, Box Office Keeper]
Publication details: 
The Arts Theatre Club, London. 1 May 1949.
£65.00

1p., 4to. On aged and lightly-creased paper. Giving breakdowns for different seats in matinee and evening productions, as well as for programmes, with the number of complimentary tickets. The Arts Theatre Club was founded in 1927, 'in an attractive building in Great Newport-street shaped somewhat like the House of Commons' (Times, 9 May 1927). On its relaunch in 1933, its stated aim was 'to select plays of theatrical merit [...] with an entire disregard for their commercial possibilities' (Times, 18 December 1933).

Four Typed Letters Signed (three 'Peggy Ramsay' and one 'Peggy R.') to Goodman, giving her characteristically forthright opinion of his plays.

Author: 
Peggy Ramsay [Margaret Ramsay] [Margaret Francesca Ramsay, née Venniker] (1908-1991), English theatrical agent [Jonathan Goodman (1931-2008)]
Publication details: 
29 May 1955, and 5 and 12 March and 19 April 1956. All on letterheads of Margaret Ramsay Ltd, Play Agent.
£120.00

All four items good, on lightly aged paper. Two of the five leaves have small dog-ears to corners. Goodman has done his accounts on the blank reverse of one leaf. An important collection, in which the most important British post-war play agent reveals, in entertaining and increasingly-brusque terms, the criteria by which she judges scripts. Goodman was hailed by Jacques Barzun as 'the greatest living master of true-crime literature', but his first love was, as his obituary in the Daily Telegraph (16 January 2008) states, the theatre.

Dorothy Canfield. A Biographical Note'.

Author: 
Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879-1958), American novelist, educational reformer and social activist [Vrest Orton]
Publication details: 
Undated [1930s?]. 'Typography by VREST ORTON'.
£225.00

Stapled pamphlet of thirteen pages (dimensions of leaf 15 x 8 cm), in original grey printed wraps. Attractively produced in relatively small print. Small stain to rear wrap, and some spotting to p.12. Inscribed beneath frontispiece photograph of a pensive Canfield at her writing desk, 'With best greetings to Harry from [signed] Dorothy Canfield Fisher'. The final page consists of a list of 'Books By Dorothy Canfield', several of which are scored through in pencil, with the titles of four others added. No copy listed on COPAC, and none listed in the Yale and Harvard catalogues.

Autograph Letter Signed to 'R. Steggall' [perhaps the organist Reginald Steggall].

Author: 
James Orton, English Victorian poet
Publication details: 
12 May 1875; 86 Usher Road, Old Ford, London.
£56.00

12mo, 4 pp. Good, with spotting to second leaf of bifolium. Steggall and Orton's 'mutual friend (our very dear friend)' Mrs. Kent has written to tell Orton that Steggall 'will be happy to see my son on Saturday evening at 6'. Orton is grateful to Steggall for thinking 'of my anxiety to retain him with me after our long & to me at least terrible separation'. He is very grateful to Steggall, who is joined to Orton by a 'link of friendship which passes through to my two dear friends Mrs. Kent and Mrs. Atherstone'.

Strictures on the four sermons on tradition and episcopacy, preached in the Temple Church, by the Rev. Christopher Benson, Master.

Author: 
Rev. Francis Merewether, Rector of Cole Orton
Publication details: 
Oxford: John Henry Parker; J. G. F. and J. Rivington, London. 1840. 'BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.'
£85.00

Octavo. 55 pages. Disbound pamphlet from the Churchill Babington collection. PRESENTATION inscription to Babington from author (dated February 1840) on light-brown printed front wrap. Very good, but with front wrap grubby and foxed, and rear wrap lacking. Scarce: only three copies on COPAC.

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