Autograph album of the fashionable Knightsbridge booksellers Truslove & Hanson, containing more than three hundred of signatures of authors and literary figures, written over a period of more than sixty years.

8vo landscape album, 21 x 26 cm. Morocco leather binding. Marbled endpapers; all edges gilt. 'TRUSLOVE & HANSON' stamped on the front board in gilt. Internally good, sound and tight; in fair binding with wear to hinges and corners and minor damp staining. Truslove & Hanson was always a fashionable bookshop, placing an emphasis on presentation. It was acquired by W. H. Smith & Son in 1923; the same firm acquired the Cambridge booksellers Bowes & Bowes in 1953. The item provides a pleasing view of the twentieth-century London literary scene, with the authors' signatures covering thirty-four pages of the album. The earliest dated signature, twelve pages in, is from 1924; the latest, on the last page, is from 1987. Signatories include Rudyard Kipling, Edith Sitwell (twice), Dorothy L. Sayers, Hilaire Belloc, Len Deighton, Dick Francis (four times), Ralph Richardson, David Niven, Cyril Connolly, Hugh Walpole, Laurie Lee, Martha Gellhorn, John Mortimer, Marie Belloc Lowndes, Oliver St John Gogarty, T. Fisher Unwin, Warwick Deeping, Robert Gittings, Michael Sadleir, Hugh Trevor Roper, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Muirhead Bone, Ruth Draper, Joan Grant, Dilys Powell, Ronald Storrs, Mrs Woodrow Wilson, Duff Hart Davis, Shirley Conran, Max Reinhardt. Louis de Wohl contributes a caricature of himself, dated 21 October 1937, with the caption 'It's a good thing to follow one's stars!' There are two signatures by Dick Francis, the first with the message 'Many many thanks to the country's no. 1 bookshop. Keep selling 'em.' This features on a page carrying the signatures of his wife, editor, and four other associates. Several pages carry signatures from a 'PARTY for new premises March 1972'. Loosely inserted are two black and white prints (each 12.5 x 17.5 cm) of the same photograph of the shop's Sloane Street frontage, with a covering manuscript note from an unknown individual, dated 29 October 1980, on a card with the firm's letterhead.