IMPORTANT VICTORIAN AUTOGRAPH ALBUM
[Bennett Family (Compiled by)] Small folio album (320 x 205mm) of approx. 200 Autograph Letters Signed, 1830s to early 20th century, mostly addressed to Sir James Risdon Bennett (1809-1891), President of the Royal College of Physicians; some to his wife and family. Early 20th century diced brown morocco, red letterpiece to spine with 'Autographs' in gilt (some edge ware only).
Mostly private correspondence and notes, accepting or declining invitations etc., some evidently originally enclosed with books or other documents, the majority 1860s to 1880s; some of the most prominent personalities of the Victorian age are represented - including statesmen, politicians, doctors and physicians, (mostly non-conformist) clergymen, missionaries, travellers, artists, literary figures, journalists, and men and women of letters. Some one sheet folded so pp.4, all pasted to guards or onto approx. 83 album pages (blank pages to rear), various writing papers (some printed headers, some coloured), cards, some slips and fragments. The papers and manuscript well preserved and clearly legible in almost all examples.
Significant Autographs Include:
Letter conferring a knighthood on Bennett from Prime Minister William Gladstone, 10 Downing Street January 1881; George I; Queen Anne; Queen Victoria; Lord Derby; Lord Chelmsford; Robert Peel; John Campbell Gordon, Marquess of Aberdeen; Dukes of Northumberland; Lord John Russell; Samuel Wilberforce; Henry Edward Manning (Catholic Archbishop of Westminster); Charles Spurgeon; Thomas Raffles; David Livingstone; Sir William Huggins (astronomer); Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker; Sophie Bryant (née Willock, educationist and suffragist, the first woman to be awarded a DSc); Isambard Kingdom Brunel; Lord Frederic Leighton; Sir Francis Grant; Wilkie Collins; Robert Browning; Octavia Hill (housing and social reformer); Arthur Conan Doyle; Karl Blind (political refugee and author).
[With:] Bennett's leather-bound 12mo passport with fold-over flap bearing ownership label: several official ink stamps, mss. notes, signatures etc., mostly c. 1835 (several pp. blank towards rear); with folded consular letters/travel documents tipped in or loosely inserted, incl. under French royal authority 1830, also for the French Empire, Belgium, German states, Italian states and the Vatican etc. Between 1833 and 1837 Bennett spent some time on the Continent with Lord Aberdeen.
Viewing highly recommended (2).