AUGUSTUS

Landscape 12mo, 2 pp. 17 pages of text. Blue oval stamp at head. Good, on lightly creased paper, with small closed tear at head. Difficult hand. 'Bambridge is not a familiar name in Virginia. Very many of the early settlers died from malaria & other fevers soon after arriving.' Discusses the difficulty of genealogical research ('we have a hundred Counties in Virginia').

12mo, 1 p. Good, on lightly aged and ruckled paper. Laid down on a piece of grey paper removed from an autograph album. Accepting an invitation, and informing the recipient that 'Mrs Callcott has recovered from her last attack - but she is still slightly affected at times, and is very weak.'

All items unbound, grubby and creased. ONE. Handbill (12mo, 1 p), dated 'August 1894', annoucing as 'NEARLY READY' William Jolly's 'Ruskin on Education'. TWO. List (quarto, 4 pp), dated 'December 1, 1894', of 'Books Published by George Allen [...] During the last Twelve Months'. THREE. Pamphlet (octavo, 32 pp), dated 'December 1894', of 'Works by John Ruskin, Augustus J. C. Hare and others, Published by George Allen'. Includes full-page advertisement announcing as 'in preparation', T. J. Wise's edition of Spenser's 'Faerie Queen', with illustrations by Walter Crane.

8vo: 1 p. Good, on creased paper with 1 cm closed tear to right of central horizontal crease (not affecting text). He thanks him for his 'kindness and courtesy'. 'I shall not fail to ask for you at Guildhall tonight'. Postscript refers to the 'pother they are making in the Times about a poor Dead and gone book of mine, called Captain Dangerous [published in 1863] Bless their hearts! I invented the whole story of Lord Francis Villein's death "out of my own head."' Docketed with four numbers in pencil.

Leno (1824-94) was a printer, publisher, poet and editor, and a significant figure in nineteenth-century radicalism. In 1845, while a printer, he led a group of radical workers who started a Young Men's Improvement Society and circulated a manuscript newspaper entitled the 'Attempt'. He then became branch secretary of the local Chartists. In 1849 the 'Attempt' became a printed journal, the 'Uxbridge Pioneer'. In 1861 he was editor of the 'Poetic Magazine' and in 1881 of the 'Anti-tithe Journal'.

English writer (1882-1950). One page, quarto. Good, but lightly creased and dusty, and with minor spotting. Concerns the writer George Augustus Sala, about whom Straus would publish a book in 1942. He is grateful for the Sala letters, and encloses a cheque. 'I appreciate your good nature in letting me have them. [...] My own Sala collection is fairly, but not wholly, complete. I have no copy, for instance, of his pamphlet (1860 or 1862) on the Wimbledon Volunteer Rifle Meeting.

British army officer (1880-1955). One page, folio. Very good. Docketed and bearing R.S.A. stamp. Unusual letterhead for a governmental department of the period. He has not received the letter, which must have been misaddressed. 'Nevertheless, I shall be glad if you will kindly forward me a copy of the Journal with the Advertisement in, and walso the exact quantity of Posters you require.'

Son (1794-1842) of King William IV by Mrs Jordan. One page, 12mo. In good condition, though slightly grubby and with remains of brown-paper mount adhering above address on verso of second leaf of bifoliate. Reads 'Lord Munster presents his Compts: to Mess Evans & Co of Pall Mall & will feel obliged to them to give him some information respecting some Arabic or other oriental MSS - which they are to sell by auction -'. Munster was for some time President of the Asiatic Society. For Robert Harding Evans (1777-1857), the greatest of all book-auctioneers, see M.