VICTORIAN

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 12mo. On recto of the first leaf of a bifolium, the verso of the second leaf of which carries the address to ‘Messrs Vizetely [sic] Branston & Co / 135 Fleet St’. The firm, who traded between 1827 and 1837, were not only ‘engravers and oriental printers’, but publishers too: the item referred to in this letter, ‘The Young Lady’s Book’, had two editions published in 1829 and a third in 1832, and Jackson presumably contributed work. In fair condition, discoloured and worn.

Hailing from Gateshead, County Durham, Elliot was a self-made man: he began life as a colliery labourer and ended it as one of the richest men in England, his wealth at death being given as £575,000. See his entry in the Oxford DNB. His residence in Whitby containing an Egyptian mummy was visited by Bram Stoker and appears to have inspired his 'Tale of the Seven Stars' (1903). 3pp, two of them 12mo and one 8vo. Bifolium, with one page of text written across the central opening at right angles. In good condition, lightly aged and worn, with a little glue from mount along outer gutter.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. Both items 1p, 12mo, and both in good condition, lightly aged, with slight evidence of previous mounting on the blank reverses. Both folded once for postage. Both letters during the tenure as Lord Mayor of London of Sir John Charles Bell (1843-1924). ONE (8 March 1907): ‘Sir Claude Macdonald has the honour to accept the kind invitation of the Lord Mayor to Luncheon on March 13th.

A good illustrated article on Groves and his boats is to be found in the magazine ‘The Gull’, March 2013, pp.19-26 (available online), emphasizing his ‘brilliant line drawings in British Seagull’s early post-war advertising’. 1p, 4to. In fair condition, lightly aged. Neatly folded twice. Twenty typed lines beneath the heading ‘A Bird Sanctuary for Lymington.’ Some lines and passages lightly underlined in red pencil. Signed at foot by Groves, as ‘Organiser and (Sec: pro-tem)’. Begins: ‘An Important Meetings is to be held in / The Assembly Room. Angel Hotel. Lymington. / on / Friday.

See both men’s entries in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 12mo. With mourning border. In good condition, lightly aged. Addressed to ‘Revd Canon Richson’ and ‘Revd and Dear Sir’, and signed ‘J. P. Manchester.’ He thanks him for his pamphlet, stating that it will have his full attention, and praising Richson as ‘thoroughly conversant with education’. Being under the impression that Richson is ‘connected with the School of Art’, he is ‘sending the enclosed as I received it’.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged, with neat ruled border from remains of windowpane mount. Folded twice for postage. Reads: ‘My dear Sir / I shall be at home tomorrow till two or will call on you any hour afterwds. do not delay the matter beyond this. / Yrs. very truly / H. L Bulwer’.

See the entry for this ‘charismatic preacher and flamboyant individual’ (referred to several times in Kilvert’s diary) in the Oxford DNB, which states that, having been dispossessed out of his property and forced to dissolve his monastery in Norwich, in 1869 he was able, with the support of a wealthy benefactor, to purchase a property at Capel-y-ffin in the Black Mountains, south Wales, where he built Llanthony Abbey. 2pp, 12mo. On bifolium. In fair condition, lightly aged. Folded once for postage. The letter is headed ‘Jesus Only.’ It begins: ‘My dear daughter in Jesus.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. On a bifolium the blank second leaf of which is laid down on part of a leaf from an album. Folded twice for postage. The recipient is ‘Henry Spicer Esq’, presumably a relation of the artist of the same name (d.1804; see ODNB), several of whose theatrical portraits are in the Garrick Club collection.

10 + [1]pp, foolscap 8vo. Customary title printed at right angles on back cover, for folding into a packet. Disbound. Text complete, but printed on aged high-acidity paper, with chipping to extremities. Front page headed 'Miscellaneous. No. 2 (1890).' No physical copy on COPAC or WorldCat, only online reproductions.

It is perhaps appropriate that we should have been left such a collection by an author who made a name for herself with pioneering works on the social history of English literature.

The present collection reflects the state of Kipling’s India during the high summer of the Raj. At the end of 1884 Lord Dufferin replaced the Earl of Ripon as Viceroy, and apart from a period of seven months between June of 1885 and January of 1886, when Lord Salisbury and the Conservatives were in power following the death of General Gordon, and Lord Randolph Churchill was Secretary of State, Gladstone and the Liberals were in power.

An interesting collection of material relating to a significant school, including thirteen items of correspondence from a notable headmaster, and four printed items, two of them scarce. Founded by Benjamin Franklin’s friend Dr John Fothergill in 1779 (see his entry in the Oxford DNB), Ackworth is the second-oldest of the seven English Quaker schools. (See Fothergill’s entry in the Oxford DNB. Franklin could ‘hardly conceive that a better man ever existed’.) Originally a co-educational boarding school, it is now a Girls’ boarding and day school.

Blackwood’s entry in the Oxford DNB quotes H. P. Lovecraft’s opinion that he was the author of ‘some of the finest spectral literature of this or any age’. On post card with printed stamp. In good condition, lightly worn, on light-brown card. Addressed to ‘Miss Cond, / Deer Park, / Honiton.’ Apart from the signature, Blackwood has added quotation marks and dealt with two typing mistakes in autograph. Good firm signature. Reads: ‘Savile Club, 69 Brook St, W. 1.

Written within days of his consecration at Lambeth on 24 June 1865. See his entries in the Oxford DNB and Dictionary of Canadian Biography. The former states that his diocese ‘covered 2 million square miles of territory, with headquarters at Winnipeg, then a hamlet with a population of 150. To assist him in the administration of the diocese he had only eighteen clergymen. In 1866 he made a difficult tour of inspection of the Native American missions’. 4pp, 12mo. Bifolium. Signed ‘R. Rupert’sLand’ and addressed to ‘My dear Covoin’. With embossed letterhead featuring a bishop’s mitre.

A nice item of Victorian charitable ephemera. The Society (later the Hepburn Starey Blind Aid Society) was instituted in 1864, and according to p.5 of the present item the phrase ‘Hall of Light for the Blind’ was ‘Given to Somers Town Blind Aid Society by a Blind Chinese Christian lad’. No copy of this item, or of any other material relating to the Society found on either WorldCat or JISC. 24pp, 12mo. Stitched. In good condition, lightly aged and worn. The front cover is laid out in decorative fashion: ‘“The Hall of Light.” / Somers Town / Blind Aid Society.

The last paragraph of McKenny Hughes’s entry in the Oxford DNB deals with his marriage, noting that his wife was ‘a keen amateur archaeologist, a botanist, and a distinguished artist, and under his tuition she became a valuable geologist’, and that the couple ‘travelled together on field excursions’, being accompanied on a trip to the Balkans by an armed guard. Six boxes of her papers are among the rest of those of the Hughes family in the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge. The present item is 64pp, 4to, mostly on the rectos of a ruled ‘Universal Exercise Book.

Singh was deposed by the British in 1889, with accusations of misgovernment, disloyal dealings with the Russian Empire, and a plot to murder his brothers and the British Resident, but as this was deemed contrary to the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar he was reinstated, but with a new ruling council was forced upon him, under the supervision of the Resident. Two slips of paper cut from a letter for display in an album. Both somewhat discoloured and a little ruckled. All the writing is in the same ink, but it is not clear whether the text of the letter is in a secretarial hand.

Reading Cooperative Society Limited came into existence in the 1860s, as ‘Reading Industrial Co-operative Society’. A nice piece of ephemera from the high-tide mark of the co-operative movement. No other copy has been traced. 50 x 68 cm. A striking and attractive production in six columns, printed in red, olive-green and grey-black, and black, with border of raspberry leaves, calendar split between the outer edges. Large illustration of ‘Llandudno and the Great Orme’ beneath the heading ‘Each for all, & all for each.

An attractive and apparently unique item of Victorian municipal typography, in the customary variety of fonts and point sizes. See Roberts’s entry in the Oxford DNB. (What particular connection, if any, he had with Northampton is not apparent.) 44 x 57 cm. A strip has been torn away from the top left-hand corner, resulting in the loss of the first two letters from the heading ‘COUNTY BOROUGH OF NORTHAMPTON’, otherwise in good condition, on lightly-aged and worn paper, with central vertical and horizontal folds.

The six items - all from Cruikshank’s ‘Comic Almanac’ for 1845 - are in fair condition, lightly aged, and have all been trimmed, with diagonals cut from the corners resulting in minor loss. The last has a small amount of loss to the bottom left-hand corner from removal from a mount. All six are signed in type by Cruikshank at bottom left. They are captioned: ‘Flying Artillery’ (gentlemen on bended knee, declaring their love to ladies, while Cupids shoot arrows from overhead), ‘The Day After - “St.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 12mo, 8vo, paginated 1-19 (originally pp.xxi-xxxix). Stitched into light-grey printed wraps. In fair condition, lightly aged and creased. This offprint is scarce: the only copy on WorldCat and JISC is at the Wellcome.

According to the Victoria County History, Jean Nicholas Voyaux de Franous (1760-1840), a Frenchman, is ‘traditionally seen as the father of Roman Catholicism in Chelsea’. 1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Signed ‘Abbé Voyaux de Franous’ and addressed to 'Dear Madam'. Indisposition is the cause of his delayed response. He was without ‘the least idea that Miss Harvey was without a place in the Chapel and gave immediate orders to have her accommodated with one.

2pp, foolscap 8vo. On grey laid paper with mourning border, brittle and lightly creased, with chipping and closed tears to edges. Addressed in Archibald’s hand to ‘The President of the Albion Society of New York’, and signed ‘E M Archibald / HM Brit Consul Genl’.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 4pp, 4to. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded for postage. Whatman watermark of 1838. Sixty-nine lines of text, addressed to ‘My dear Sir Charles’ and signed ‘Thomas Hastings’. Begins: ‘I have been thinking that the difficulty of giving mathematics instruction to the Lieuts of R[oyal]. M[arine]. A[rtillery].

3pp, 12mo. On bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once for postage. Signed ‘Lauriston . E . Shaw / Dean of the Medical School & Asst Physician to Guy’s Hospital’. Begins: ‘Mr A. K. Matthews M.R.C.S LRCP has been known to me as a student at Guy’s Hospital during the last five years.

2pp, 4to. In fair condition, lightly aged, with slight damage at head from breaking of the wafer, and small spike hole at centre. Addressed on reverse to ‘Most Noble / Marchioness Cornwallis / 12 Park Crescent’. The printed statement beside this has been completed in manuscript to show that the Marchioness has twelve votes. The other side of the leaf is headed: ‘Polling Paper / For the Electio of Three Contributary Wards, / On Wednesday, December 14th, 1842, / Between the hours of Two and Four o’Clock, / At the House of the Adult Orphan Institution, / St.

An interesting letter casting light on the Victorian provincial press. Scott’s entry in the Oxford DNB states that, while he was living in Birmingham, ‘H. J. Palmer offered him a staff appointment on the Birmingham Gazette; but he had to leave when he stipulated that, as a Liberal, he should write nothing in support of the Conservative cause. He was working again as a freelance when, in 1887, he was invited by W. T. Stead to join him on the Pall Mall Gazette. He worked for six years on that paper under Stead and then Edward T. Cook.’ 4pp, 12mo. On bifolium. In fair condition, lightly aged.

Now scarce. Among the six copies listed on JISC, only three (BL, Cambridge, NLW) are in the deposit libraries. Unpaginated 12mo pamphlet, w Iith page of contents, four pages of ‘Explanatory Note’ and three pages of facsimiles, on six leaves of shiny art paper, stitched into grey printed wraps with title on cover and two pages of advertisements at rear. In fair condition, lightly aged, in grubby wraps with tiny nick lost from bottom corner of front wrap.

Weld and Vaughan both have entries in the Oxford DNB. The notice is printed in copperplate on the recto of the first leaf of a 4to bifolium. In fair condition, aged and lightly worn, with short closed tear to one edge, and slight damage to the second leaf from the cutting of the seal, which is present on the verso, with a good impression, in red wax, together with two postmarks and the address, in Weld’s hand, to ‘W. Vaughan Esq - [F.R.S.] / 70 Fenchurch Street / [Royal Society.]’ The notice, signed ‘C. R.

In 1809, at the Battle of Aspern, the author of this work, the Archduke Charles, became the first man to defeat Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1814 his ‘Grundsätze der Strategie, erläutert durch die Darstellung des Feldzuges von 1796 in Deutschland’ was published in three volumes in Vienna. A French translation appeared in 1841, but there is no record of an English one (although JISC does throw up a work with a similar title published by ‘A Kearsey’ in 1928, the only copy it lists being in the National Army Museum).