Four ink drawings, portraits in the style of Daniel Maclise's illustrations to William Maginn's 'Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters' in Fraser's Magazine, and possibly depicting John Nichols, Theodore Hook, Percival Bankes and William Jerdan.

Fraser's Magazine launched in London in February 1830, and to begin with its most popular feature was Maginn's 'Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters', with illlustrations by Maclise (collected in book form in 1873). The four portraits, all busts, are somewhat reminiscent of those in that work, but must be earlier if the identification of John Nichol, who died in 1828, is correct. The four are on separate pieces of paper, laid down 2 X 2 (with the four sitters looking inwards towards the centre of the page) on a leaf torn from an album. They are certainly originals, one at least done in sepia, with pencil outlines visible under the ink. The condition of three of the portraits is good, but the third described below (possibly D'Orsay) is somewhat foxed. Clockwise from top left, they are a bespectacled figure, tentatively identified as John Nichols (on paper 12 x 7.5 cm); a complacent individual reading a book, possibly Percival Bankes or Maginn himself (12 x 8.5 cm); another complacent individual, with too much chin and bottom lip, possibly Count D'Orsay, William Jerdan or David Moir (13 x 9 cm); and finally a portly figure looking uncommonly like Theodore Hook (12 x 8 cm). On the reverse is a lithographic print, on india paper (23.5 x 18.5 cm), looking very much like a pencil drawing, being a full-length portrait of an old bespectacled gentleman in profile, readign 'Cobbet's [sic]' newspaper, dressed in an old-fashioned cutaway jacket and hessian boots, with his dog behind him. In the bottom right-hand corner is 'Ob. October 1852 Aet 86 No. 1852'.