History

An Act to empower the Legislature of Canada to alter the Constitution of the Legislative Council for that Province, and for other Purposes. [11th August 1854.]

Author: 
British Act of Parliament, 1854, regarding the Canadian Legislature [Canada]
Publication details: 
London: Printed by George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, Printers to the Queen's most Excellent Majesty. 1854.
£195.00

8vo, 3 pp. Paginated [1233] to 1235. Disbound bifolium. Good, on lightly-aged paper, with small hole in gutter. Headed with the royal crest and 'ANNO DECIMO SEPTIMO & DECIMO OCTAVO VICTORIAE REGINAE.' and 'CAP. CXVIII.]

An Act to empower the Legislature of Canada to make Laws regulating the Appointment of a Speaker of the Legislative Council. [8th August 1859.]

Author: 
British Act of Parliament, 1859, appointing a speaker to the Canadian legislature [Canada]
Publication details: 
London: Printed by George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, Printers to the Queen's most Excellent Majesty. 1859.
£95.00

8vo, 2 pp. On first leaf of a bifolium, with the second leaf blank. Paginated [37]-38. Headed with the royal crest and words 'ANNO VICESIMO SECUNDO & VICESIMO TERIO VICTORIAE REGINAE.' and 'CAP. X.'

Two Autograph Letters Signed ('Charles Gibson' and 'Charles E. Gibson') by Gibson, as Lieutenant and Adjutant of the 49th, written to his 'Aunt Kate' from Sebastopol during the Crimean War, including a description of horse races during the armistice.

Author: 
Captain Charles Edgar Gibson, of the 49th Regiment of Foot [Crimean War; Sebastopol]
Publication details: 
Letter One: 'Camp Sebastopol. January 24th. 1856.' Letter Two: 'Camp 49 Regt Sebastopol. March 31st.'
£350.00

Letter One: 12mo, 4 pp. Bifolium. 75 lines of text. Clear and complete. Good, on lightly-aged paper. Expresses regret at 'Morten Edens melancholy death, so young & so clever as he was'. 'There is great talk of Peace. We hardly know if to believe it - few will be sorry should the news prove to be true, as I think most of us have had enough fighting. Apparently refers to his sweetheart under a cypher. She has not written to him, but 'London gaieties have little time for correspondence'. 'The weather here is something awful - cold & wet, fogs & sleet.

Autograph Letter, in the third person, to Mrs Wallack, on the occasion of the Wallacks' Paris performances.

Author: 
John Y. Mason [John Young Mason] (1799-1859), U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary to France, 1853-1859 [James William Wallack (1764-1864), Anglo-American actor]
Publication details: 
15 June 1855; 13 Rye Beaujon (on letterhead of the Paris Legation of the United States).
£85.00

4to, 1 p. Twenty lines. Text clear and complete. On aged and lightly-creased paper. Responding to 'the kind note of his esteemed Country woman Mrs. Wallack'. He is 'gratified to learn, that Mr. Wallack will present to the Parisian public representations in the English language, of the best of our Tragedies & Comedies'. He wishes the Wallacks 'the most complete success, and will with pleasure attend the performances, when his health will permit him & his family to do so'. Two of Mason's family will take up Wallack's offer of tickets for the opening.

Autograph Letter Signed ('T. F. Bayard') to the Hon. Francis Lanley.

Author: 
Thomas Francis Bayard (1828-1898), Secretary to President Grover Cleveland [Francis Lanley; Timothy Bigelow Laurence]
Publication details: 
3 April 1881; on letterhead of 1413 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington D.C.
£75.00

12mo, 3 pp. In bifolium. 28 lines. Text clear and complete. Fair, on aged paper. He is going to do Lanley 'a great favor' by assisting him 'to become acquainted with my friend Mrs. Bigelow Laurence [widow of Timothy Bigelow Laurence (1826-1869)] - who will be in England during the summer or autumn'. Reminisces about 'a book you and Casserly and I once planned at a breakfast table here', which was 'to consist of the best specimens of the skill and power of the Poets giving one chance to each'. To assist Lanley he is letting him know 'a woman who is a judge of poetry in its best sense.

Autograph Letter, in the third person, to Captain Mason.

Author: 
Thomas Francis Bayard (1828-1898), Secretary to President Grover Cleveland [Lord George Hamilton]
Publication details: 
24 May 1894; on letterhead of the Embassy of the United States, London.
£56.00

12mo, 1 p. Thirteen lines. Text clear and complete. Fair, on aged and foxed paper. Acknowledging 'Captain Mason's note of yesterday', and in response to the request of 'Lord George Hamilton and the Committee', 'Mr Bayard' states that he will 'respond with much pleasure to the toast of "the United States" tonight at the banquet to the Admiral and officers of N.SS Chicago'.

Two Autograph Letters Signed (both 'B. H. Bristow') to E. R. Robinson.

Author: 
Benjamin Helm Bristow (1832-1896), first Solicitor General of the United States
Publication details: 
Saturday May 22' [no year] and 25 June 1880; second letter on letterhead of the 'Office of Bristow, Peet, Burnett & Opdyke, 20 Nassau St., New York.
£150.00

Letter One: 12mo, 12 p. Fourteen lines. Text clear and complete. Fair, on aged paper. Asks to 'rescind' his promise to go with Robinson to the races, as 'One of those troublesome fellows whom we call clients, but who are sometimes called victims by the ignorant & vicious, has made an appointment for me this afternoon'. Letter Two: 12mo, 1 p. Asking Robinson to join him and two others at a dinner with General Burnett at the Union Club.

Autograph Letter Signed ('Julian Pauncefote') to his subordinate at the Washington Legation, 'Barry'.

Author: 
Julian Pauncefote (1828-1902), 1st Baron Pauncefote, British diplomat
Publication details: 
19 September 1891; on letterhead of the British Legation, Washington (with that city replaced in manuscript by 'Newport R.S.')
£56.00

12mo, 4 pp. In bifolium. 42 lines. Clear and complete. Fair, on aged paper. He thanks him for the news of the 'progress of repairs &c at the Legation', and approves 'of your having ordered extra help to scrub the floors after all the mess which no doubt the workmen left behind them "more americano".' The former state of the 'kitchen flue [...] may account for the apparent inefficiency of the old Range'. He will return on the 'arrival of the next F.O. Bag on Monday'. Gives his travel plans.

Autograph Letter Signed ('Isaac Heard Garter') regarding Lord Rawdon bearing 'the Surname and Arms of Hastings'; with a manuscript copy of 'The humble Petition [to the King] of Francis Lord Rawdon Baron Rawdon in the County of York' on the subject.

Author: 
Francis Rawdon-Hastings (1754-1826), 1st Marquess of Hastings; Sir Isaac Heard (1730-1822), Garter Principal King of Arms
Publication details: 
Heard's letter: February 1790; College of Arms. Copy of petition without date or place.
£85.00

Letter: Foolscap (32 x 20 cm), 1 p. Text clear and complete. 4 lines. In poor condition: on aged paper with chipping and closed tears. Male recipient not named. Heard finds 'no Objection to the Prayer of the annexed Petition of the Right Honble Lord Rawdon that he and his Issue may take and bear the Surname and Arms of Hastings.' Petition: Foolscap (32 x 20 cm), 1 p. Text clear and complete, the body of the petition consisting of twenty lines. On aged, brittle paper, with closed tears along fold lines, and chipping to extremities.

Handbill headed 'An Appeal to Working Men and Women', pressing for 'the English law to protect your girls from being led into vice'.

Author: 
Ellice Hopkins (1836-1904) and Emily Janes (d.1928), Honorary Secretaries, Ladies’ Associations for the Care of Girls
Publication details: 
January, 1885. 41, Great Russell-street, British Museum, W.C.
£225.00

On both sides of a piece of paper, 19 x 11.5 cm. Seventy-seven lines. Text clear and complete. Fair, on aged and lightly-worn paper. Contrasts the law on the continent with that in England, where 'an unruly girl at any age can go on the streets, and the person who harbours her is not guilty of a greater crime than if she were a women [sic] of thirty or forty [...] Will you not help us heart and soul in getting our English girls, - your daughters, remember, - as carefully protected as Belgian and French girls?

Autograph Letter Signed ('J Würtz'), in French, to 'mon cher Martin'

Author: 
J. Würtz [Commission Scientifique pour l'exploration des Antiquités Américaines, Paris]
Publication details: 
19 September 1851; on letterhead of the Commission Scientifique pour l'exploration des Antiquités Américaines, Paris.
£45.00

8vo, 3 pp. Bifolium. Good, on lightly-aged paper. In a difficult hand. Apparently relating to a proposed meeting and dinner for 'tous les trois' (including ''). It is curiously difficult to discover anything, either about Würtz or about the Commission.

Autograph Letter Signed "J Weiss" to "Morse"[Sidney H. Morse, editor of "The Radical"]

Author: 
John Weiss (1818-1879), Unitarian Minister, author, "second generation transcendentalist"
Publication details: 
Watertown, [MA], 26 December 1865.
£150.00

Four pages, 8vo, grubby and with fold marks but text clear and complete. Weiss is writing about an untimate contribution to "The Radical" and another article. "I don't know that it is a matter of much consequence, but I rather want to have my "Dangers" [Dangers of Our Political Machinery, published in "The Radical", No.III, Feb. 1866, p.208ff] in hand, that I may put it in print in some form - newspaper perhaps - beause it explains and fills out my sermon, especially on that delicate point of suffrage.

Part of a mimeographed typewritten report into the activities of the VDA, including translations of Haushofer's 'Problems and Solutions of the VDA', Bockhacker's 'Resettlement Christmas', and other texts.

Author: 
Der Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland [VDA; Karl Haushofer; Heinz Bockhacker; Nazi propaganda; Germany; Second World War]
Publication details: 
[Compiled by the American intelligence services between 1942 and the end of the Second World War.
£950.00

The spelling (e.g. 'honor') is American, the latest date mentioned is in 1942, and there is no indication that the document has ever been published. 58 pages, on one side each of fifty-eight A4 leaves (each roughly 26 x 20 cm), paginated 26 to 83. Punch holes for a binder at the head of each leaf.

Autograph Letter Signed by Wood to unnamed recipient, recalling the Manchester treason trial of Thomas Walker and five others, 1794.

Author: 
Ottiwell Wood, radical Manchester fustian manufacturer [Thomas Walker (1749-1817), Manchester radical; Treason Trial of 1794; Luddites; Luddism]
Publication details: 
8 January 1844; Edge hill.
£150.00

12mo, 3 pp. Bifolium. Good, on lightly-aged and creased paper. Wood begins by recalling 'the savage bigotry and infuriate hostility of the Manchestr. Tories at the time you mention towards the liberals'. He does not think an attempt was made to put the Oath of Allegiance to those on the recipient's list. 'The lives of 6-8 men of high Character and standing in the Town were placed in jeopardy by the perjury of two Villains and they were tried at Lancaster for either Treason or Sedition. I think for the former.

Autograph Letter Signed ('Le Despencer') to an unnamed correspondent (a neighbouring landowner?).

Author: 
Francis Dashwood (1708-1781), 11th Baron Le Despencer, politician and rake; member of the Hellfire Club; founder of the Monks of Medmenham Abbey
Publication details: 
Hanover Square, London, 7 May 1779
£350.00

4to: 1 p. 10 lines of text. Good, on lightly aged paper. Text clear and entire. Docketed on the reverse of the otherwise-blank second leaf of the bifolium. See preceding letter on same subject (#8136). He hoped to have met his correspondent "ar WestWycombe" to discuss the cottage occupied by a "poor man" which may be on a neighbour's land. A "trifling affair". "I did nequire about it last summer, and was told that it was built on the waste by some poor man and I suppose some small fine might have been set on it by the Jury at my Court as a trespass on the waste.

Autograph Letter Signed ('Eldon') to Twining, based on a misapprehension. With memorandum by Twining, initialled 'R T'.

Author: 
John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon (1751-1838), Lord Chancellor [Richard Twining (1749-1824)]
Publication details: 
Undated. [London, post 1801.]
£38.00

8vo, 1 p. Eleven lines. Text clear and complete. Good, on lightly-aged paper, with a couple of spots from the leaf to which it was attached adhering to the blank reverse. Docketed at head in ink: 'Mem I know not to what application this refers.'; and at foot in pencil: 'Mem I was not the writer of the Letter referr'd to! | R T'. Eldon has received the recipient's letter, 'with a paper inserted from Mrs <?> Campbell or Clark. This paper is addressed to me under a very common Misapprehension of the Chancellors powers & duties'.

Autograph Letter Signed "M.A. Hughes" to Richard Twining,jun., Banker and Tea Merchant (see DNB

Author: 
Mrs M.A. Hughes, author, grandmother of Thomas Hughes, central to the literary society of her day.
Publication details: 
No place, 24 Sept. [1807].
£350.00

Three pages, 4to, but cross-written, making six pages of writing, sometimes hard to read, small piece of letter with a few words detached but present. Mrs Hughes is her usual informative, authoritative, lively and intelligent self, initially discussing the British disaster at Buenos Ayres. being unable to think of "a worse planned or more ill-fated expedition" in which the dead were "sacrificed". She attacks the commander, the Duke of York, in no uncertain terms: she hopes it's not a crime to wish him out of a world to which he he'd done so little good.

List of Different Houses' (docketed 'List of Houses and Correspondences established by the House of Gopaldoss'), signed '/A true copy/ | Jno White | <?>'.

Author: 
[East India Company; British Raj; the House of Gopaldoss]
Publication details: 
Without place or date [circa 1820?].
£120.00

One page, octavo. Very good. On paper with 'C TAYLOR' Britannia watermarked paper. Possibly an East India Company document. Of obscure meaning, headed 'List of Different Houses', and consisting of two columns (the left-hand one of sixteen lines, and the right-hand of eleven). Includes 'Moorshedabad', 'Massulipatam', 'Poona, the Money paid to Mr. Mallet', 'Ahumabad the Residency of their Correspondent's' and 'The Mahratta Army'. With 'Exd: W D' in bottom left-hand corner. Docketed on reverse of second leaf of bifolium, with reference 'No. 149. A. | Entd at Dell <?d.> | " - MS'.

Signed ('Geo Wroughton') printed circular letter, addressed to T[homas]. Adams [of Alnwick, Northumberland].

Author: 
George Wroughton of Wilcott, Wiltshire [Bengal; the East India Company]
Publication details: 
25, Berners Street, London; May 12 1813'.
£125.00

4to bifolium: 2 pp. Good. Soliciting Adams's 'Vote and Interest' when he is 'enabled to proceed to a ballot', having 'lately presumed to offer myself to the Proprietors of East-India Stock, as a Candidate for a Seat in their Direction, upon some future vacancy'. (Feeling 'that their suffrages will have been very generally engaged to an earlier Candidate for the next appointment which a casualty may occasion', he does not want to 'interfere with that Election'.) He was resident in Bengal for thirteen years, and the final paragraph describes his other qualifications.

Draft Autograph Letter, probably incomplete (lacking signature page), to "St John". WITH related material.

Author: 
George Wyndham
Publication details: 
"Private / Draft / 25 Oct. 1904".
£500.00

(Wyndham) Statesman and man of letters, at the time of this letter Chief Secretary fo Ireland (see DNB). Three pages, 4to, good condition, draft with much working over. He appreciates being given detailed grounds for a proposal that Sir Anthony Macdonnell [MacDonnell, Antony Patrick, Baron MacDonnell, statesman, of Irish origin] , currently working with Wyndham in Ireland might be made available in the Indian Council, a matter of urgency. He explains at length his high opinion of Macdonnell (energy, ability, distinction, etc.) and his reluctance to part with him.

Autograph Signature, removed from letter.

Author: 
William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), British Liberal Prime Minister
Publication details: 
Without date or place.
£25.00

On piece of paper roughly 2.5 x 7.5 cm. Mounted on piece of 7.5 x 13 cm card. In fair condition, with both card and paper aged and slightly discoloured. Good firm underlined signature ('W E Gladstone'). The card carries the following caption, in a contemporary hand: 'Autograph of | The Right Honorable William Ewart Gladstone, M.P., | Premier Minister and | Chancellor of the Exchequer.'

Fragment of Autograph Letter to Palmer, with signature ('W E Gladstone') on frank.

Author: 
William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), British Liberal Prime Minister [Roundell Palmer (1812-1895), Earl of Selborne]
Publication details: 
20/07/35
£30.00

Part of a letter, cut away for an autograph collector, roughly 5.5 x 10.5 cm. The recto carries the franked address, trimmed close, reading 'London July twenty 1835. | Roundell Palmer Esq | Mixbury | Birmingham [corrected in another hand to 'Magdalen Colle | Oxford'], signed in bottom left-hand corner 'W E Gladstone'.

Printed Voting Paper on behalf of the parliamentary candidate Alexander Beresford Hope, in the 'Cambridge University Election, 1868'. Complete with the perforated stub.

Author: 
[Cambridge University, General Election, 1868; Sir Alexander James Beresford Beresford Hope (1820-1887)]
Publication details: 
[Cambridge, 1868.]
£45.00

Printed on one side of a piece of green paper, 28 x 21.5 cm, with vertical perforated line 6.5 cm in from the left-hand margin, dividing the paper into stub (28 x 6.5 cm) and paper (28 x 15 cm). Clear and complete. Fair, on lightly-aged and creased paper, with slight wear to extremities. Part of blank reverse laid down on leaf removed from album. From the collection of William Done Bushell (1838-1917), who received his B.A. from St John's in 1861 (later assistant master and honorary chaplain at Harrow School).

Fascists and Nazis. By Perry Belmont, Commander of the Narragansett Bay Chapter of the Military Order of the World War.

Author: 
Perry Belmont [Eric Underwood; German Nazism; fascism; the Teutonic Order; Freemasonry]
Publication details: 
[Privately printed.] Newport, Rhode Island: December, 1940.
£150.00

Stapled pamphlet. 8vo, 27 pp, including full-page photograph of Mussolini embracing a man in Nazi uniform (Himmler?). Fair: internally clean and tight; some marking and wear to covers. Inscribed on title-page to 'Eric Underwood Esq with the sincere regards of Perry Belmont'. (Underwood is perhaps the English-born Australian nutritionist, 1905-1980.) Curious, digressive, energetic attack on fascism, with sections on the Teutonic Order, 'Oath-bound organisations' (Freemasonry) and 'Gangsters'.

Four original sepia studio photographs of Gladstone, and one of his wife. With photographic reproduction of an optical illusion caricature.

Author: 
William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), British Liberal Prime Minister; his wife Catherine Gladstone [nee Glynn] (1812-1900) [Thomas Fall; Samuel Alexander Walker]
Publication details: 
None dated [but one from 1881]. The photograph of Mrs Gladstone by the London Stereoscopic Company; photographs of Gladstone by T. Fall, 9 & 10 Baker Street, London, and Samuel A. Walker, 230 Regent Street, London. [The other two unattributed.]
£450.00

ITEM ONE: Photograph of Gladstone, 14 x 10 cm, by Thomas Fall (1833-1900). In very good condition, laid down on the photographer's worn printed card, 16.5 x 11 cm. Showing Gladstone seated outdoors, with his grandson on his knee. NPG x22229 (the entry for which describes it as a 'carbon cabinet card', taken on 14 September 1881). ITEM TWO: Photograph of Gladstone, 14.5 x 10 cm, by Samuel Alexander Walker (1841-1922). Laid down on the photographer's printed card ('Portraits "At Home" A new Application of Photography introduced by Samuel A. Walker'), 16.5 x 11 cm.

Autograph Note Signed ('Hartley Shawcross') to J. Livingstone of Newcastle-on-Tyne.

Author: 
Sir Hartley William Shawcross [Lord Shawcross] (1902-2003), English jurist, chief prosecuting counsel at the Nuremberg War Trials [Tribunal], 1945-1946
Publication details: 
25 July 1949; on letterhead of the Royal Courts of Justice, London.
£35.00

12mo, 1 p. On aged and creased paper. He has autographed the picture sent by Livingstone, and is returning it.

Typed Letter Signed ('Willoughby de Broke') and Autograph Letter Signed ('W. de B.') to Ormsby-Gore, concerning his desire to 'write a history of the Die-Hard affair'.

Author: 
Richard Greville Verney, 19th Baron Willoughby de Broke (1869-1923) [William George Arthur Ormsby-Gore (1885-1964), 4th Baron Harlech; The Parliament Act, 1911]
Publication details: 
17 and 30 December 1913; both on letterhead of Compton Verney, Warwick.
£150.00

Text of both letters clear and complete, on aged, grubby paper. The 'Diehards' were a group of right-wing Conservative peers who attempted unsuccessfully to thwart Liberal legislation to limit the right of veto of the House of Lords over Commons legislation. (See G. D. Phillips, 'The Diehards: Aristocratic Society and Politics in Edwardian England', Cambridge, Mass., 1979.) TYPED LETTER: 17 December 1913. 4to, 1 p. He is going to try to write the history of the affair '[b]efore things fade altogether from my memory', and asks if OG has 'any papers, or letters, or diaries'.

Autograph Signature ('W E Gladstone') on frank, addressed to Guillemard at 11 Downing Street.

Author: 
William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), British Liberal Prime Minister [Sir Laurence Nunns Guillemard (1862-1951)]
Publication details: 
Without date.
£25.00

The front cover of the envelope, 9.5 x 12 cm, cut away and laid down on a ruled piece of paper cut from an autograph album. A little grubby, but good. Reads 'L N Guillemard Esq | 11 Downing St. | [signed] W E Gladstone'. Signature approximately 4.5 cm long, and underlined.

Manuscript Memorandum, in English, docketed 'General Bernard's information respecting ettiquette [sic] of the french Court'.

Author: 
Baron Simon Bernard (1779-1839), French general of engineers, who did much military work for the United States government
Publication details: 
Date and place not stated.
£56.00

Written in a neat, close hand (not Bernard's) on one page (the recto of the first leaf of a 12mo bifolium). Twenty-one lines. Text clear and complete. On aged, grubby and lightly-creased paper.

Autograph Letter in the third person to Buchan, regarding 'Mr. Pitt', 'his abilities and fortitude' and 'the dilemma' arising from 'the present situation'.

Author: 
Thomas Pitt, 1st Baron Camelford (1737-1793), politician and art collector [David Steuart Erskine, eleventh earl of Buchan (1742-1829), antiquary and reformer]
Publication details: 
8 February 1784; Oxford Street.
£56.00

4to, 1 p. On piece of watermarked laid paper. Thirteen lines of text. Clear and complete. Good, on aged paper, with thin strip of stub adhering to blank reverse. Docketed at head, in a contemporary hand, '331 | Lord Camelford for fac simile'. Camelford was not at home when Buchan called, but he 'will take care that his Lordship's Letter shall be transmitted to Mr Pitt [his cousin William Pitt the younger?]'. Pitt 'will doubtless feel himself flatter'd with his Lordship's testimony in favour of his abilities and fortitude'.

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