VESTA

Typed Letter Signed ('Compton Mackenzie') from the Anglo-Scottish author Sir Compton Mackenzie to the theatre historian W. J. MacQueen-Pope, discussing famous London actors and pantomimes of the 1890s, with a carbon copy of the typed reply.

Author: 
Sir Compton Mackenzie [Sir Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie] (1883-1972) [W. J. MacQueen-Pope [Walter James MacQueen-Pope] (1888-1960)]
Publication details: 
Mackenzie's letter on letterhead of Denchworth Manor, by Wantage, Berkshire. 1 January 1951. Copy of MacQueen-Pope's reply dated 5 January 1951, with place not stated.
£120.00

Mackenzie's letter is 1p., landscape 12mo. 16 lines. Good, on lightly-aged paper, with a crease to one corner. He thanks MP for his 'encouraging letter' and discusses his own 'silly slip about the Faery Queen's entrance' in a radio broadcast: 'I was so much concerned with giving listeners the difference between the O.P. and the Prompt side that it became a question of physician heal thyself.' He continues: 'I wasn't sure of the year Mille Le Garde [sic] sang that song. Probably '97. Rose Dering was the Aladdin. She was second boy. Ted Young was the Widow Twankey.

Coloured advertisement for Swan Vesta matches, in the form of a pastiche of a London Underground sign.

Author: 
Advertising artwork [ LONDON UNDERGROUND; SWAN VESTA; TOBACCO; SMOKING]
Publication details: 
Without date or place [1920s or 30s?].
£75.00

Attractive illustration, in red, green, yellow and black, on piece of white card roughly nine and three-quarter inches by six and a quarter, neatly mounted on piece of black card roughly ten and a quarter inches by seven and three-quarters. At head a parody of the London Underground black rectangle over red circle, roughly six and a half inches by three and a quarter, bearing the notice 'ALIGHT HERE' in white letters. Beneath this the words 'FOR EVERY SMOKER.', with a red arrow at foot pointing to a box of Swan Vesta matches. Very good, though lightly foxed.

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