AUTOGRAPH

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged with patch of light sunning. Folded once. The recipient is not named. Reads: ‘Dear Madam / Forgive me for my delay in answering your letter. I have been laid up for a week or two with influenza & my correspondence has suffered in consequence. / And please believe that your words have given us sincere pleasure & that I am / Yours very faithfully / A. T. Quiller-Couch’. The hyphen in the signature is almost imperceptible. See image.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 4to. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded twice. Addressed ‘To the Rev. A. H. Vayers’, but with the ‘V’ corrected in manuscript to ‘S’. Signed ‘Oliver Lodge’. Reads: ‘My dear Sir, / I am exceedingly busy, and a visit to Monmouth is quite out of the question. There are many others better qualified to speak for The League of Nations Union; and I trust you will have a successfull meeting.’

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 12mo. On a leaf of grey paper. In good condition, lightly aged. The recipient was studying at the Royal Academy Schools. Begins: ‘Dear Miss Towgood / Thanks for your letter and enclosed statement by Mr Percy Young.’ He asks to be sent ‘the names of the authors of the various “Cartoons” and “Creswick”’, so that he may have all his material ‘ready for the Council on Tuesday next’. He intended to ask her for the names in ‘the Schools’ (of the Royal Academy at Burlington House), ‘but a sudden attack of Influenza confines me to my room by the Doctor’s order’.

On 11.5 x 7.5 cm calling card. In good condition, lightly aged. The calling card is printed in copperplate font, with the name ‘Mrs. Neville Chamberlain.’ centred, and the address ‘10, Downing Street, / S.W.1.’ at bottom left. Two lines of the inscription are written above the name and the rest beneath. Reads: ‘Thank you so [sic] & Major Cripps so much for those more lovely carnations which I appreciated so much. / Anne Chamberlain’. See image.

See his obituaries in The Times, Burlington Magazine and elsewhere. Casting light on the process of reopening the British Museum in the wake of the Great War. From the papers of the recipient, Wilfred Seymour De Winton of Haverfordwest and Cardiff. 1p, 12mo. In fair condition, lightly worn and creased. Signed ‘R. L. Hobson’ and addressed to ‘Dear Mr. de Winton’. He has been ‘back at the Museum about 3 weeks & most of that has been spent in helping to get ready for the public some of the more accessible galleries’.

See her entry in the Oxford DNB. The ‘Congress’ she is referring to in the letter is the 1869 Bristol Social Science Congress. 1p, 16mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded twice. Reads: ‘Dear Miss Thompson / It gave me pleasure to see you at the Congress I feel sure you will have heard much here which will stimulate you to further work. / I enclose you my carte as a remembrance. / Yours truly / Mary Carpenter. -’

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. An 11.5 x 7 cm piece of paper, cut from the front of an envelope. In fair condition, laid down on a piece of grey paper cut from an album. Faint franking postmark in red ink. Laid out in Palmerston’s neat and stylish hand in the customary way, and reading: ‘London February Twenty 1826 / Peter Legh Esqr. Junr / Haydock Lodge / Warrington’, with the signature ‘Palmerston’ at bottom left. See image.

See her entry in the Oxford DNB, which does not accord her name a hyphen, although she does in this letter. 2pp, 12mo. On grey-paper bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once. Signed ‘M Bethan-Edwards’ and addressed to ‘Dear Miss Birkett’. She apologises for having to decline her kind invitation: ‘I never can lunch out being busy till 1 pm’. Since ‘the afternoons are now so very short’, and she does not like ‘climbing the hill in the dark’, she proposes calling on her at 4pm. ‘It will then give me much pleasure to see you.’

An attractive artefact of a pioneer of women’s rights. See her entry in the Oxford DNB. On 14 x 9 cm post card. In good condition, lightly aged. Addressed by Faithfull, with two stamps and postmarks, to ‘Miss Muriel Lewis / Greyhound Hotel / Carshalton / Surrey’. In neat hand and with good firm signature: ‘1 Campden Grove Kensington / I hope to see you to lunch to-morrow Monday at 1. pm. / Yrs. / L. M. Faithfull’.

See her entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 4to. In fair condition, on lightly-browned paper. Folded four times. The recipient is not identified. Signed ‘Henrietta E. V. Stannard’ and addressed to ‘Dear Lady’. She thanks her for ‘the kind help you have provided for my old lady’. The ‘very generouos responses’ she has met with have exceeded her expectations, and she hopes that her ‘dear old friend’s future comfort and independence are now assured, for the rest of her life’.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. The postcard, with stamp printed on it, has the typed address: ‘The Rev. A. H. Sayers, / Orchard Close, / Monmouth’. Aged and worn, with a dog-eared corner and minor rust spotting from a paperclip. Stylised signature. Reads: ‘Many thanks for your offer to send a car to meet me at Severn Tunnel Junction, on November 20th. I will look out for it. / Yours / L Housman’. From the Sayers papers, with other material indicating that Housman was giving a talk for the Union. See image.

Pauer, who had studied piano with Mozart’s son, gave daily recitals during the Great Exhibition of 1862, and was later appointed Professor at the newly-formed Royal College of Music (later the Royal College of Music), also working at Cambridge University. 2pp, 16mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded twice. Reads: ‘Dear Miss Alain / I do not see any chance of being able to arrange for the lessons you desire to take. I need not tell you that I am sorry that I cannot fulfil your wish. / In haste yrs truly / E Pauer’.

1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded three times. In order to mark the request as dealt with, the recipient has written a thin ink line across the page. Reads: ‘W J Chadwick Esqre / Sir / Please send me price list of your Teacher’s Patent Lantern Microscope / Yours truly / C. V. Creagh / Governor of North Borneo / Address / Sandakan / North Borneo / via Singapore’.

See his long but strangely-cagey entry in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 12mo. On a bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once. Signed ‘Frederic Harrison.’ The recipient is not named. The letter begins: ‘Madam, I am obliged to you for your interesting letter[.] I do not enter an argument because it is founded on a few sentences which give a very imperfect idea of what I said on Sunday last.’ He does not dispute many of her assertions and, as for ‘the usefulness of larger landlords’, he has ‘repeatedly urged it in my addresses’.

The East India Company has come under renewed scrutiny in recent years as ‘the world’s first multinational’: an early model of the acquisition of hegemony by means of transnational non-governmental corporations. 2pp, foolscap 8vo. On bifolium of thick laid paper, whose head has been cut into the customary wave. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded twice into the customary packet. On the recto of the first leaf is the long printed form ‘Indenture’ with blank parts completed in manuscript. Red wax seal under paper at bottom right.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 25 March [no year]; 12 St James’s Place [London]. 3pp, 12mo. On a bifolium. In fair condition, lightly aged, with thin strip cut from top of first leaf (not affecting text). Signed ‘A W Kinglake’. The recipient is not named. Presumably writing during his period as Member of Parliament for Bridgewater, between 1857 and 1869, he begins ‘My dear Sir / I shall make a pint of being present at the discussion of the Bill which threatens to make Charities liable to local assessment’.

Despite Vaughan’s final protestations, a fine analysis of the competing forces around the drive for reform of the Church of England. See his entry in the Oxford DNB. The present item is from the papers of the recipient, Wilfred Seymour De Winton (c.1856-1929) of Haverfordwest. 4pp, 12mo. On bifolium with mourning border. Signed ‘C. J. Vaughan’. Thirty-six lines of text. Begins ‘Dear Mr. de Winton, / I am interested by your letter.

3pp, 12mo. On bifolium with mourning border. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once. Rough pencil floorplan on verso of second leaf. Twenty-eight lines of neatly-written text. Signed ‘Agnes Macdonell.’ She has seen Mrs Blair’s name ‘in the list of subscribers to the Government Benevolent Institution’, and writes a line ‘to beg, if you have not already given your vote and kindly interest to any Candidate - to do this in favour of the poor lady whose card I enclose’ (not present).

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once. The recipient, whose name Jacobs gives as ‘D. H. Denselow Esq’, was the commercial artist and autograph hunter Douglas Harold Hellier-Denselow, whose studio was in Gunnersbury, West London. The note reads: ‘Dear Mr. Denselow / I am much obliged for your letter & its accompanying illustration. I shall not follow your example & affix my eye to my autograph / Yours very truly / W. W. Jacobs’.

See his long entry in the Oxford DNB, which sums up his achievements as ‘very substantial’ and ‘a source of enduring inspiration to others’. 1p, 16mo. On bifolium with thin mourning border. In good condition, folded twice. Written in his characteristically-inky hand, and signed ‘Shaftesbury’. Reads: ‘Dear Mr Rowley / I did not forget your request. I trust that, by the blessing of God, your [fears?] are [removed?]. / Yours tr[ul]y / Shaftesbury’. Seee image.

Weyman was, as his entry in the Oxford DNB states, ‘one of the most popular and skilled of the historical romance novelists of the cloak and dagger school’. Oscar Wilde recommended his novels as reading for convicts. The present item is on an 11 x 9 cm piece of watermarked laid paper. In good condition. A neat attractive two-line inscription for an autograph collector, underlined and sloping upwards. Reads: ‘Stanley J. Weyman | Nov. 2. 1899’. See image.

See the entries for Baines and Reynolds in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded twice. Addressed to ‘The Rev. H. R. Reynolds, D.D.’, and signed ‘Edw. Baines.’ The letter dates from between 1861, when Lord John Russell was created Earl Russell, and his death in 1878. Begins: ‘My very dear Friend, / I have just been shaking hands with Earl Russell. I was standing with the mob of M.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once. At the foot of the second page, in another hand (no doubt that of the recipient) are written Doyle’s details in red ink. Signed ‘D. A. Boyle’ and addressed to ‘Dear Mr. Dean’. He is returning the photograph he has sent, ‘endorsed in the way you ask’, but his wife agrees with him that ‘the photo you have got hold of is a very bad one so I am sending you another - also enclosed - which I hope you will use for your collection and destroy the other’.

Lewis’s entry in the Oxford DNB describes how, as Minister of War in 1861, successfully led the British cabinet to reject Lord John Russell and Gladstone’s calls for Britain to intervene on behalf of the Confederacy in the American Civil War. 1p, foolscap 8vo. Folded twice. In fair condition, on lightly aged laid paper, with slight chipping at the head. With J. Green & Son 1848 Britannica watermark. Signed ‘G. Cornewall Lewis’, and addressed to ‘Mr. Peter Jackson / The Caxton Press / Angel Street / St. Martin’s-le-Grand’.

See his appreciative entry in the Oxford DNB, concluding with praise of his ‘undeniable’ achievements. 1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged, with the blank reverse carrying very slight staining to one edge from glue from mount. Folded once. Neatly and firmly written, with the underlined signature with a deliberate upwards slope. Clearly sent in response to a request for an autograph. Reads: ‘ “A man dies but once, a woman twice - the first time when she marries, and then, as at the last, wondering at the thereafter.” / Lady Bountiful. / Act IV. / Arthur W. Pinero. / 23rd. February 1897.’

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded twice. Sixteen closely- and neatly-written lines. After thanking him for his ‘kind and seasonable letter’, he states that he is ‘not much affected by rude abuse in parliament or through the press’ as he is ‘pretty well hardened in that respect’, and that he ‘may possibly have an opportunity’, in his own ‘proper place’, ‘of explaining & vindicating’ his position, for the purpose of which he asks Allan ‘for somewhat more particular information in regard to monumental inscriptions in Christian communities’.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once. Reads: ‘Dear Mr. Dean, / According to your request, I enclose a signed photo of myself for your collection. / With best wishes, / Yours sincerely, / Peter Gellhorn.’

Redgrave’s entry in the Oxford DNB praises his ‘exceptional administrative skill’, and states that ‘Redgrave and Cole supervised the new South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum), for which Redgrave designed the innovative art gallery to house John Sheepshanks's extensive collection of British art, given to the state in 1857.’ 1p, 12mo. On grey paper. In good condition, laid down on part of a leaf from an autograph album. Pasted down at the head of the letter is a thin strip on which is printed ‘Inspector-General for Art. R. Redgrave, R.A.’ The male recipient is unnamed.

2pp, 12mo. Bifolium. In fair, condition on lightly aged and discoloured paper. Folded twice. Signed ‘J. S. Brownrigg’. He will makes sure that the points raised by De Winton are fully considered at a ‘good meeting’ the following Monday of ‘our Standing Committee and the Committee of the Church Parliamentary Party’. While one of the points will be ‘easily met by moving the exclusion of Clause 17’, he is afraid that ‘a new Committee elected under the provisions of the Bill would be hardly better than the present governing Body in Welsh Counties’.

Clearly produced for an autograph collector. On one side of a 12.5 x 8.5 cm cream card. In good condition, lightly aged. The inscription reads: ‘For Janis / Merry Xmas to you / Sincerely / Noah Beery’. Affixed in the top right-hand corner, partially covering the word ‘you’ in the inscription, is a black and white stamp, with photographic portrait captioned at foot ‘NOAH BEERY’. Dated in pencil at bottom-right ‘Dec 1936’.