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An elegantly produced autograph manuscript in gold ink of Mesnage’s satire in hexasyllables denouncing the arrivistes of the Second Republic. It is apparently unpublished. Born in 1821 at Evron (Mayenne), Mesnage claimed direct descent from Racine and published several poetical works, including Les Fleurs d’Avril (Laval, 1854 of which a copy is included here).

This portrait is a naive interpretation of the classic image of Ramon Llull (c. 1232- c. 1315), Catalan mystic and mathematician. It is derived from the engraved portrait which first appeared in the seventeenth century Bibliotheca Chalcographia published by Jacques Boissard and Theodor de Bry in 1664.

A contemporary sketch of the dedicatee of The Lark Ascending, signed by her at the Glastonbury Festival, 1919. Marie Hall (1884-1956) was the outstanding violinist of her generation and it was for her that Vaughan Williams wrote this most popular piece of English music. First written in 1914, performance of The Lark was delayed by Williams’ service in the Great War. He and Hall revised it together in 1920 for a piano and violin performance that year, before she performed it for the first time in a full orchestral version (under Sir Adrian Boult) later that year. Hill played a famous Stradivarius which later took her name.

First editions. Parts III and IV followed in 1794. All are scarce due, presumably, to their having been ‘suppressed on account of their personal allusions’ (DNB).

Halhed (1751–1830) was friends with Sheridan at Harrow, and they collaborated on the bawdy Love Epistles of Aristaenetus (1771). They shared, too, an affection for the singer Elizabeth Linley; when she married Sheridan, Halhed went to India, where he befriended William Jones and Warren Hastings, and set up what became the East India Company Press in Bengal.

These lively adaptations of Martial to the modern age were composed after Halhed’s return to Britain, with all manner of contemporary references, i.e. Rights of Man, Renwick Williams the ‘Monster of London’ condemned in 1790 for assaults on various women, Newgate, Grub Street, the poetry of Pindar. Alexander Gordon, writing in DNB, remarks that they ‘show a keen power of epigram’.

These copies, though recently preserved in modern wrappers, retain extensive manuscript notes, apparently by one W. P. Stawell, whose name appears on the front free endpaper. Some of these contains dates in the 1830s and 1840s and are all apparently in the same hand. Mostly verse, some are obviously extracts or copies from printed sources, but some may be original. They include ‘Lines of Buchanan on his Mistress’, ‘A Retort’ (beginning ‘A pert young Barrister Hibernia’s son’), a transcription from the tomb of Joseph Palmer in Exeter Cathedral’ and (most interestingly), ‘On the new Penny Postage Plan Jany 10 1840’ (’By corresponding circumstances fired / A rage for Letter-writing has mankind inspired / Millions write letters who ne’er wrote before / And those who wrote, write millions more...’). Jackson p. 183.

Contemporary caricature portraits of the great American millionaires Carnegie, Pierpont-Morgan, Gordon-Bennett, Harjes, Frick and Depew. The drawing was probably intended for reduction and publication in an (unidentified) journal. Rouveyre (1879-1962) was immensely prolific as a caricaturist and maintained friendships and correspondence with important figures such as Apollinaire and Matisse (having met the latter as joint students of the symbolist painter Gustave Moreau).

An eighteenth-century account book of the guild of hatmakers in the city of Antwerp, covering nearly 70 years. The Antwerp hatmakers were an important craft organization with a well-regulated structure. Their accounts were overseen by aldermen, each serving for several years, who recorded income (usually in the the form of entry fines for new members) and expenditure (usually payment for the guilds officials). One of the major expenditures was the payment of the ‘proefmeesters’ who exercised quality control by examining the products of prospective entrants before admitting them to membership.

The accounts provide a detailed record of the names of entrants to the guild and of guild officials. They also provide much incidental detail of the position of the craft within the regional economy, with frequent expenditures recording contact with the neighbouring towns of Brussels, Mechelen and Bruges.

An attractive vernacular mass and prayer book, characteristic of German Catholic devotion of this period, with decorative calligraphic headings and vignettes. The title translates loosely as Little Catholic Prayer Book in which the best morning, evening, mass confession [and] communion prayers as well as the best litanies have been put together with other different prayers, written by me....’