NICOLSON

[Lord Weidenfeld (George Weidenfeld), publisher.] Typed Letter Signed to Philip Dosse, publisher of ‘Books and Bookmen’, discussing his partner Nigel Nicolson, and a review by Diana Mosley of a biography he has published of her sister Unity Mitford.

Author: 
Lord Weidenfeld [George Weidenfeld, Baron Weidenfeld] (1919-2016), publisher [Philip Dosse (1925-1980), publisher of ‘Books and Bookmen’; Weidenfeld and Nicolson; Nigel Nicolson (1917-2004)]
Publication details: 
18 November 1976. On his letterhead, 11 St John’s Hill, London SW11.
£80.00

An interesting letter, containing an assessment by a leading publisher of what he sees as the unusual position he considers his profession occupies within the business world. See his entry, and that of his partner Nigel Nicolson, in the Oxford DNB. The recipient Philip Dosse was proprietor of Hansom Books, publisher of a stable of seven arts magazines including Books and Bookmen and Plays and Players. See ‘Death of a Bookman’ by the novelist Sally Emerson (editor of ‘Books and Bookmen’ at the time of Dosse’s suicide), in Standpoint magazine, October 2018. The present item is 2pp, 12mo.

['Public Baths for the Working Classes' in Nicolson Square, Edinburgh.] Three items relating to the project, two in manuscript (long circular letter, and accounts with 'Remarks') and printed prospectus.

Author: 
'Public Baths for the Working Classes' in Nicolson Square, Edinburgh; Charles Gardner, Secretary to the Committee; D. McLaren and William Johnston]
Publication details: 
Printed prospectus dated Edinburgh, 14 July 1847. Circular letter from Committee Rooms, Cranston's Temperance Coffee House, High St, Edinburgh; 1 August 1844. Accounts at 12 August 1844.
£450.00

Surprisingly little appears to have been written about the public baths at 12 Nicolson Square, Edinburgh; with no references to it on the Scottish Archives Network. There is however an informative reference to the subject in Francis H. Groome's 'Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland' (1884): 'Good public baths, of various kinds and various extent, for the upper and the middle classes, are in several parts both of the city and its environs. Public baths for the working classes were long a desideratum, though earnestly desired by many of the working classes themselves.

Typed Letter Signed ('Salisbury') to 'Miss Niggeman', responding to her comments on 'the Showing of the House at Hatfield'.

Author: 
Robert Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil (1893-1972), 5th Marquess of Salisbury [Hatfield House; Elvira Niggeman, secretary to Sir Harold Nicolson]
Publication details: 
5 April 1948; on embossed House of Lords letterhead.
£35.00

4to, 3 pp. 42 lines of text. Good, on aged paper. He is sorry not to have known about Niggeman's bank holiday visit to Hatfield House: 'it would have been an immense pleasure to us all to see you. Do come down and pay us a private call some other time.' The 'points' she makes 'are just the kind of thing we want to know'. Salisbury did not 'go round the Hosue with the visitors, for I did not wish to embarrass the guides; but clearly there is a good deal more organisation needed before our machinery works smoothly'.

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