BALLADS

[Theodore Martin, Scottish poet and author.] Autograph Letter Signed ('Theodore Martin') intended as a pass for the inspection of the Shakespeare bust and pictures of 'the old celebrities of the English stage' in the Garrick Club.

Author: 
Theodore Martin (1816-1909), Scottish poet and author [The Garrick Club, London]
Publication details: 
13 July 1871; 31 Onslow Square [London].
£45.00

3pp, 12mo. Bifolium. In fair condition, aged and worn, but with slight water staining and damage to blank area at foot of second leaf. The male recipient is not named. The letter begins: 'My dear Sir | If you present the enclosed to the porter of the Garrick Club, I have no doubt all the Art Treasures of the Garrick will be open to your inspection.

[Theodore Martin, Scottish poet and author.] Autograph Letter Signed ('Theodore Martin') intended as a pass for the inspection of the Shakespeare bust and pictures of 'the old celebrities of the English stage' in the Garrick Club.

Author: 
Theodore Martin (1816-1909), Scottish poet and author [The Garrick Club, London]
Publication details: 
13 July 1871; 31 Onslow Square [London].
£45.00

3pp, 12mo. Bifolium. In fair condition, aged and worn, but with slight water staining and damage to blank area at foot of second leaf. The male recipient is not named. The letter begins: 'My dear Sir | If you present the enclosed to the porter of the Garrick Club, I have no doubt all the Art Treasures of the Garrick will be open to your inspection.

[David Davies ('Dai'r Cantwr'), the Rebecca Riots and Transportation to Australia: Victorian Welsh street ballad.] Printed poem, titled: 'Can Hiraethlon David Davies (Dai'r Cantwr,) Pan yn Garcharor yng Nghaerfyrddin, am y Terfysg yn amser Becca'.

Author: 
David Davies (c.1812-1874), Welsh poet known as Dai'r Cantwr (David the Singer), transported to Van Diemen's Land after the Rebecca Riots [nineteenth-century Welsh street ballad]
Publication details: 
No place or date. [Welsh, late Victorian.]
£280.00

The full title reads: 'Can Hiraethlon | David Davies (Dai'r Cantwr,) | Pan yn Garcharor yng Nghaerfyrddin, am y Terfysg yn amser Becca. | Cenir ar y dôn “Roslin Castle.'” The title may be translated as 'A nostalgic song, written when a prisoner in Carmarthen, for the riot in Becca's time. | Sung to the tune of 'Roslin Castle'. 4pp, 12mo (15.5 x 9 cm). Paginated [1]-4. Disbound. A frail survival: aged and worn, with damp-stain along one edge. Beneath the title is a small vignette of a sailing ship, and at the end of the final page is another of a crown. Poem in four sixteen-line stanzas.

[Two Victorian Welsh street ballads, one with engraved advertisement for 'FINE TEAS AND TOBACCO'.] Two poems printed together: 'Cerdd y Tobacco' and 'Can y Bachgen Main'.

Author: 
[Nineteenth-century Welsh street ballads; tobacco; smoking]
Publication details: 
No place or date. [Welsh, late Victorian.]
£100.00

4pp, 16mo (15.5 x 9 cm). Paginated [1]-4. Bifolium. Disbound. A frail survival, aged and worn. The first leaf (pp.1-2) carries the poem 'Cerdd y Tobacco' ('The Tobacco Poem'), in five eight-line stanzas, with the title followed by a half-page stock woodcut (evidently from a tobacconist's advertisement) of an oriental figure seated on crates on the dockside, with sailing ship in the background. At the foot is engraved: 'FINE TEAS AND TOBACCO'. The second leaf (pp.3-4) carries the poem 'Can y Bachgen Main' ('Song of the Slender Boy'), in six eight-line stanzas.

[Two Printed Victorian Welsh Migration Street Ballads by Isaac Thomas of Aberdare.] 'Morgan Bach a'i fam yn ymddiddan ynghylch myned i Australia' and 'Dychweliad Morgan Bach o Awstralia, A'i fam (Gwen o'r Gyrnos) yn methu ei adnabod.'

Author: 
Isaac Thomas of Aberdare [Welsh Migration Street Ballads; Victorian popular literature; nineteenth-century emigration to Australia]
Publication details: 
Welsh, late nineteenth century. Both without date or publication details.
£450.00

Two Welsh street ballads, indicative of the desire for emigration during a period of hardship. Both 4pp, 16mo (15 x 9 cm). Both bifoliums, and both paginated [1]-4. Frail survivals, heavily aged and worn. ONE: 'Morgan Bach a'i fam yn ymddiddan ynghylch myned i Australia'. Vignette of a sailing ship beneath the title, which translates as 'Young Morgan and his mother talking about going to Australia'. Poem of eleven eight-line stanzas, in the form of a dialogue between the 'Y FAM' and 'MORGAN'. Signed in type at end: 'ISAAC THOMAS.

[ Arthur Calder Marshall, author. ] Typed Letter Signed to Harry L. Spilstead, regarding his edition of the ballads of George R. Sims.

Author: 
Arthur Calder Marshall (1908-1992), English novelist, essayist, critic, memoirist and biographer [ Harry Leonard Spilstead; George R. Sims (1847-1922), author and bon vivant ]
Publication details: 
3 The Grove, Lower Teddington Road, Hampton Wick, Kingston-upon-Thames. 15 January 1968.
£50.00

1p., 4to. In good condition, lightly aged. The main topic of the letter is Marshall's work preparing his book 'Prepare to shed them now. The Ballads of George R. Sims' (London: Hutchinson, 1968). A long and characteristic letter. After references to their meeting at the British Museum and to 'that excellent bookseller, Mr Wallace of The Guild Hall Bookshop' ('he showed me a selection of the Dagonet Ballads – nothing like as good as the copy you saw'), he turns to a 'Sims letter' which Spilstead sent him: 'I cant at the moment date it.

[ Sir Theodore Martin, Scottish poet and translator. ] Autograph Letter Signed ('Theodore Martin') to 'Mrs. Green', an autograph hunter.

Author: 
Sir Theodore Martin (1816-1909), Scottish poet and translator, best-known for his 'Bon Gaultier Ballads'
Publication details: 
On letterhead of 31 Onslow Square, S.W. [ London ] 10 March 1877.
£25.00

1p., 12mo. In good condition, with small printed slip from catalogue pasted above letterhead. The recipient is named as 'Mr. Green | Claremont House | Clapton'. Reads: 'Madam | My autograph can be of little value to any one, but in compliance with your wish so courteously expressed I enclose it & am | Madam | Faithfully yours | Theodore Martin'.

[ Frank Kidson, Leeds antiquary and musicologist. ] Autograph Letter Signed to Fuller Maitland on the subject of Henry Purcell.

Author: 
Frank Kidson (1855-1926), antiquary and musicologist [ John Alexander Fuller Maitland (1856-1936), British music critic and music historian, an authority on Henry Purcell ]
Publication details: 
5 Hamilton Avenue, Chapeltown, Leeds [ Yorkshire ]. 'Wednesday' [no date].
£80.00

4pp., 12mo. Bifolium. In acceptable condition, aged and somewhat grubby. He thanks him for sending his article in the 'Musical Gazette', and comments that it is 'certainly curious about the Purcell Catch & the coincidence of the four notes, but it is difficult to say whether it was done purposely or by accident'.

[Charles Godfrey Leland, American author.] Autograph poem titled 'Assyrian. (Jonah.) From the German of Scheffel.' With ebullient signed dedication ('Charles G. Leland') to a relation of Leonard Field, Bencher of the Inner Temple.

Author: 
Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903), American writer and folklorist, author of 'Hans Breitmann’s Ballads' (1871) [Leonard Field (1824-1903), Bencher of the Inner Temple; Josef Victor von Scheffel]
Publication details: 
The poem on letterhead 'Lea, | Leamington.' 'Written for Miss Field. Easter Sunday 1871'.
£250.00

In very good condition, on lightly-aged paper. The poem (24 lines in six stanzas) is written out on the letterhead 'Leam, | Leamington'. 1p., 12mo, with the blank second leaf of the bifolium tipped-in onto an 8vo leaf.

Printed collection of four Irish poems, with scores and illustrations, headed 'A Broadside': 'Pharao's Daughter' ['attributed to Michael Moran - 'Zosimus'']; 'The Riddle Song'; 'The Rose Tree' by W. B. Yeats (music by Arthur Duff); 'Famine Song'.

Author: 
[Irish ballads; Cuala Press; Colm O Lochlainn]
Publication details: 
Without place or date. [Ireland, 1960s?]
£100.00

4pp., 4to. Printed on brown paper. In good condition, lightly-aged and with one corner dogeared. The only copy traced on OCLC WorldCat in the Thomas P. O'Neill Library at Boston College, in whose entry it is tentatively dated to the 1960s, with the note about the series to which it belongs: 'Primarily a selection and reprinting from Cuala Press' collected edition of Broadsides (new series), originally issued Jan.-Dec.

Autograph Letter Signed from the Scottish poet Sir Theodore Martin to John T. Baron of Blackburn, agreeing to a request for his own and his wife's autograph, and explaining the circumstance of one of his Bon Gualtier Ballads.

Author: 
Sir Theodore Martin (1816-1909), Scottish poet, biographer and translator, author of the 'Bon Gualtier Ballads', husband of the actress Helena Faucit [John T. Baron of Blackburn, autograph hunter]
Publication details: 
31 Onslow Square [London], on his crested letterhead. 15 December 1882.
£65.00

2pp., 12mo. Very good, on lightly-aged paper. In worn envelope, with stamp and postmark, addressed by Martin to 'John T. Baron Esq | 48 Griffin Street | Witton | Blackburn'. He begins by explaining that he has 'had every minute so fully occupied of late', that he has not been able to comply with Baron's request. 'Lady Martin has done what she is now most reluctant to do - written the name she once bore with a few lines from Cymbeline. I have copied the verse you wish from the little Bon Gaultier Poem'.

[Printed Georgian pamphlet of song lyrics, not in ESTC.] The Gentleman's Concert. Being A Choice Collection of Favourite Songs. Containing, [twenty numbered song titles, including '15. I am a poor black, it is true.'

Author: 
[Georgian song book; Cluer Dicey & Co., London publishers; 'George Seghious'; 'The Black's Lamentation'; slavery]
Publication details: 
Publication details and date not give. [London: Cluer Dicey & Co. 1770s?]
£280.00

The full drophead title, beneath a headpiece of three lions in folliage, reads: The Gentleman's CONCERT. | BEING | A Choice Collection of Favourite SONGS. | Containing, | [following 10 lines in left-hand of two columns] 1. Where's my swain so blyth and clever | 2. To an arbour of woodbines. | 3. The flame of love sincere I felt. | 4. When all the Attic fire was fled. | 5. Cupid, god of pleasing anguish. | 6. As I walk'd forth, &c. | 7. O give me leave to love you dearly. | 8. When Fanny I saw as she trip'd, [sic] &c | 9. Bumpers 'Squire Jones. | 10. Sweet Annie.

[Printed handbill poem by 'B. B.'] On a favourite Dog, interred in the Grounds of Dryburgh Abbey, MDCCCXIV. [With Victorian photograph of a dog.]

Author: 
'B. B.' [Sir Brooke Boothby (1744-1824)?] [Dryburgh Abbey, property of David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan]
Publication details: 
Date and publisher not stated. [Scotland, circa 1814?]
£400.00

Poem: On one side of a piece of 12mo paper. Fair, lightly-aged and a little ruckled, with traces of gum from previous mounting on the blank reverse. The 12-line poem is written in heroic couplets, and begins 'POOR, faithful animal, adieu! - | To Nature's kind affection true, | For fourteen years, thy grateful heart, | Devoted, play'd its humble part.' At the end a contemporary hand has ascribed the poem to 'B. B.', and the same hand gives the date as 'September 3d'.

French nineteenth-century handbill poem by 'L. N.' on the game of whist, titled 'Le Whist.'

Author: 
'L. N.' [French nineteenth-century handbill poem on the game of whist]
Handbill poem by 'L. N.' on the game of whist
Publication details: 
Date of publication and name of printer not stated [1840s Paris?].
£350.00
Handbill poem by 'L. N.' on the game of whist

2 pp, 12mo. On the first leaf of a bifolium of wove paper. Fair, on lightly-aged paper. Signed 'L. N.' in type at end. A 114-line poem, in rhyming alexandrine couplets, beginning 'Messieurs, au jeu du whist adoptez constamment | L'air grave britannique et le flegme allemand.

Anonymous French nineteenth-century handbill poem, containing precepts on the game of chess, entitled 'Le Jeu d'Échecs.'

Author: 
'Le Jeu d'Échecs' [anonymous French nineteenth-century handbill poem on the game of chess]
Handbill poem, containing precepts on the game of chess
Publication details: 
Date of publication and name of printer not stated [1840s Paris?].
£650.00
Handbill poem, containing precepts on the game of chess

4 pp, 16mo. Paginated [1] to 4. On a bifolium of wove paper. Fair, on lightly-aged and creased paper, with thin strip of previous mount adhering to inner margin of first page.

Autograph Note Signed "W S Gilbert" to the Blackburn poet J.T. Baron [John Thomas Baron ('Jack O'Anns')]

Author: 
W.S. Gilbert [William Schwenk Gilbert], librettist
Publication details: 
[Printed heading] 24 The Boltons, South Kensington, 29 Nov. 1881.
£400.00

One page, 12mo, slightly marked but text cleear and complete. "I must refer you to the publisher, Messrs Routledge, Broadway, London, for a reply to your question." Suitable for framing.

Two Autograph Letters, one "Anonymous" the other signed, to the Bovey Coal Pottery Company

Author: 
Joseph Cottle, bookseller and publisher (of "Lyrical Ballads", etc)
Publication details: 
Bristol and Fairfield House near Bristol, 1850 and 20 Dec. 1850.
£250.00

One page and two pages, both 8vo, bifolia, some staining but text clear and complete. In the first letter to which (as he explains in the second letter) he didn't add his name, he says that he visited "your Bovey Coal Pits" as a geologist (!), made observations and concluded that it was a "real Coal district, the current coal mined [an internet site informs me of poor quality] being of a "comparatively recent formation". Real coal was produced in an earlier period.

Folio broadside ballad, illustrated with woodcut, entitled 'Patient Joe, or the Newcastle Collier.'

Author: 
Z.' [Hannah More] [the Cheap Repository for Religious and Moral Tracts]
Publication details: 
Undated [circa 1795]. 'Sold by S. HAZARD, (PRINTER to the CHEAP REPOSITORY for Religious and Moral Tracts) at BATH; By J. MARSHALL, PRINTER to the CHEAP REPOSITORY, [...] and R. WHITE, Piccadilly, LONDON [...]'
£200.00

On one side of a piece of laid paper, 45 x 27 cm. Dimensions of printing, including decorative border, 37 x 21.5 cm. Woodcut at head (between two vignettes) roughly 6 x 7.5 cm, showing two men with packs, one smoking a pipe, trudging across a field, with a dog in the foreground and what looks like a merry-go-round in the background. Clear and entire. With light water staining, but in good condition overall. The poem, attributed at the end to 'Z.' and announced as 'Entered at STATIONERS HALL', consists of seventy-two lines arranged in eighteen four-line stanzas over two columns.

Broadside titled 'King Crispin. The ancient and modern history of King Crispin, with a particular account of the plan and order of the grand procession, time of meeting, &c.'

Author: 
Robert Martin, Edinburgh printer [Freemasonry; the Craft; broadsides; street ballads; handbills]
Publication details: 
Edinburgh: 'Printed for, and sold by R. MARTIN . . . . Price one penny. | Glass, Printer, South Niddry Street'. [Between 1832 and 1851?]
£175.00

Printed on one side of wove paper roughly 41.5 x 17 cm. Text clear and complete. On aged, creased and grubby paper. In two columns, headed by the title and royal crest. Begins 'Bannatyne's Key to the Almanack gives the following account of Sts Crispin and Crispianus, brothers, [...]'. Concludes: 'In a short time Crispin ascended the throne, [...] he was sainted and the Shoemakers, through gratitude for the privileges conferred on them, made him their tutelar saint'.

Wood's Edition. Napoleon's Book of Fate. [with two woodcuts, including one on cover of David's 'Napoleon crossing the Alps']

Author: 
J. T. Wood [Joseph Thomas Wood (d.1874)] [Napoleon Bonaparte; fortune-telling; astrology; oraculum; chap book]
Publication details: 
Undated [between 1858 and 1874]. London: Published by J. T. Wood, 278, Strand.
£150.00

12mo: 8 pp, unpaginated. Stitched. In original green printed wraps. Text and illustrations clear and complete, on browned high-acidity paper with damp staining at head. Wraps foxed and with slight chipping to extremities. The cover features a striking crude woodcut (12 x 9 cm) of David's 'Napoleon crossing the Alps'. The first page features another woodcut (9 x 7 cm) of a martial figure on horseback, with sword drawn.

Cnuasachd bheag amhrán. Le haghaidh aos óg na Gaedhilge d'foghluim ins na sgoileannaibh. An t'Athair Pádraig Breathnach do chruinnigh. [Cuid a tri.]

Author: 
Pádraig Breathnach [Father Patrick Walsh (c.1885-1927), Irish cleric, republican and folklorist]
Publication details: 
Dublin: Muinntir Bhrúin & Nualláin do chlódh-bhuail. [circa 1920?]
£120.00

16mo (15 x 12 cm), 32 pp. Stapled pamphlet, in original green printed wraps. Text complete and clear, on aged and dogeared paper. Wraps worn and stained. Part three only of an annotated collection of ballads. Six-page English glossary at rear. Scarce: the National Library of Ireland only appears to have Part Five, and the only record on COPAC is of Parts One and Three at Trinity College, Dublin.

Handbill street ballad entitled 'Mr. Sopkin's Misadventures at Blackpool. (After Ingoldsby's Misadventures at Margate.)'

Author: 
Samuel Laycock (1826-1893), Victorian Yorkshire dialect poet [nineteenth-century Blackpool]
Publication details: 
Publisher and date not stated.
£75.00

At foot: 'PRICE ONE PENNY.' On one side of a piece of wove paper, roughly 220 x 170 mm. Enclosed within decorative border. Foxed and creased, with edges trimmed to edge of border. Thin strip of card mound adhering to one edge of reverse. Text clear and entire. Printed in two columns employing characteristically Victorian typography. Twenty-six four-line stanzas (the last two being the 'MORAL.'). Begins 'When down at Blackpool last July, and walking on the Pier, | I met a pretty maiden, so I said "How do my dear?" | "What do you here, love, by yourself? How is it you're alone?

Autograph Letter Signed ('Theodore Martin') [to an autograph dealer?].

Author: 
Sir Theodore Martin (1816-1909), Scottish poet, biographer and translator.
Publication details: 
27 February 1888; on letterhead '31, Onslow Square, S. W.' [London].
£50.00

One page, 12mo. Good, though a little grubby at the right-hand margin, and with the name of the recipient neatly torn away at foot. 'Dear Sir | Neither Lady Martin nor myself feel any interest in any letters of ours, which may have come into your hands.'

Autograph Letter Signed ('Theodore Martin') to 'Mr. Fulton'.

Author: 
Sir Theodore Martin (1816-1909), Scottish poet, biographer and translator
Publication details: 
20 September 1881; on letterhead 'Bryntysilio, near Llangollen.'
£28.00

12mo: 2 pp. On lightly creased, discoloured paper, with traces of hinge from previous mounting adhering to margin of first page. He has 'an uncomfortable feeling' that he 'laid aside' a letter from Fulton 'to be answered, but which I cannot now find. It must somehow have got mixed up with other papers [...] If I am right in my fear, may I ask you to send me a copy of it?'

Autograph Letter Signed ('Theodore Martin') to John Grant, presumably the bookseller.

Author: 
Sir Theodore Martin (1816-1909), Scottish poet, biographer and translator
Publication details: 
10 October 1896; on letterhead 'Bryntysilio, near Llangollen'.
£45.00

12mo: 1 p. On discoloured paper, ruckled and with traces of glue from previous mounting on reverse. He is returning 'the account of the Burns Volume' which accompanied his correspondent's letter of 8 October. 'It does not suit me to purchase it, as I have already other & more important memorials of Burns.'

Photographic portrait by J. E. Mayall of Brighton and New Bond Street.

Author: 
Sir Theodore Martin (1816-1909), Scottish poet, biographer and translator
Publication details: 
Without date. 'J. E. MAYALL | 91, KING'S ROAD | BRIGHTON | 164, NEW BOND ST. | LONDON. W.'
£35.00

Dimensions of photograph 9 x 5.5 cm. Good sepia image, on backing card with Mayall's details printed in red at foot. Reverse of card mostly covered with remains of previous cream paper mount. This image does not feature among the three portraits of Martin listed in the National Portrait Gallery's online catalogue of its collection.

Autograph Letter Signed to Egerton Grey.

Author: 
Teresa del Riego
Publication details: 
12 January 1937; on letterhead '18, HOLLYCROFT AVENUE, N.W.3. | TEL: HAMPSTEAD 0055.'
£75.00

British composer (1876-1968) of light classical music and singer. 16mo. 2 pages. In good condition, with one neat vertical crease and one dog-eared corner. She thanks him for the 'charming lyrics'. 'I don't think I had better embark on any more at present, as I find it increasingly difficult to get things published, & my Store of MSS. is very large!' The two letters of his that she has are signed 'Grey' and she will be interested to see his 'real signature'. She wonders whether he has a spare copy of 'A recall'.

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