BLACKPOOL

12mo, 2 pp. 25 lines. Text clear and complete. Fair, on aged paper, with thin neat strip from mount along left-hand margin on reverse. The letterhead, printed in brown, is headed 'JOHN CARVETH WELLS, F.R.G.S.' and features a small caricature portrait of Wells, apparently seated in a pram, reading from a book. Beneath his name is printed 'Poems, Short Stories, Articles, Lyrics and Music. | Travelogues and Talks. Hand-made Jewellery. | Colour Linocuts. Radio Talks, Acting, Writing.' The author of this letter published an autobiography, 'My Candle at Both Ends', in 1944.

At foot: 'PRICE ONE PENNY.' On one side of a piece of wove paper, roughly 220 x 170 mm. Enclosed within decorative border. Foxed and creased, with edges trimmed to edge of border. Thin strip of card mound adhering to one edge of reverse. Text clear and entire. Printed in two columns employing characteristically Victorian typography. Twenty-six four-line stanzas (the last two being the 'MORAL.'). Begins 'When down at Blackpool last July, and walking on the Pier, | I met a pretty maiden, so I said "How do my dear?" | "What do you here, love, by yourself? How is it you're alone?