Mitford sisters (6 risultati)

GD. GD.

Hardcover. Condizione: Near Fine. Condizione sovraccoperta: Near Fine. 1st Edition. Price NOT clipped, DJ nicely in archival wraps. Stated first edition and first numberline printing. Light shelf wear; pages with age toning. Illustrated.

GD. LOC MITFORD SISTERS.

Hardback. Condizione: VG+. VG+ DW. 1st Edition. Book and dustwrapper/dustjacket are in very good plus condition with very minor signs of wear and/or age. SPECIAL POSTAGE RATES MAY APPLY Packed weight 1400g.

Both letters good, on lightly-aged paper. The second letter in envelope addressed by Mosley to 'Peter Reid Esq | 68 New Cavendish Street | London W1 M 7 LD [sic] | Angleterre'. Letter One (2pp., 12mo): She begins: 'My husband asked me to answer your letter. I think we have got photographs of Rolleston, but all such things are stored in Ireland, where we used to have a house. When I go through them (which one day I must) I will send you what I find. (I'm not absolutely certain.)' She briefly describes Rolleston's transformation from 'a nice 18th Cent house with bits of Elizabethan at the back' to 'a sort of grand Italian villa-ish style'. She and her husband have 'a little amateurish water colour of the old house dated 1816'. Keeping a record is 'such a good idea'. 'In Staffordshire every other house seems to have been pulled down, very sad.' Letter Two (2pp, 8vo): She thanks him for his letter and enclosures, and asks to hold on to them 'until the publisher decides which would be the best to use'. 'The family tradition was that the big Jacobean hall was incorporated in the 18th Century Rolleston. It was totally destroyed in the fire, & its pictures, Van Dycks according to my mother in law.' She describes 'what remained in the way of pictures', now in the possession of her eldest stepson, the last with 'a surprisingly lovely French frame, Louis Philippe I imagine'. She also describes a picture 'which has been cut from the burnt part & was given by my husband to my son Max, it is at his house in Brompton Square'.…

2pp., 12mo. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged and worn, with thin strip from stub adhering to edge of second leaf. The page is headed 'Private & Confidential', and the poem is preceded by the following note: 'I must send you the verses on the Battle of the Sunflower on "The Batsford Nondescript". A twenty-four line poem, in six four-line stanzas, on the theme of a disagreement over the naming of a specimen, between the botanist Anthony Hurt Wolley-Dod (1861-1948) and the director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Sir William Turner Thiselton-Dyer (1843-1928). Penultimate stanza headed 'Wolley Dod loquitur', and last one headed 'A week later - the same loquitur'. The poem begins: 'Quoth Wolley Dod, "Dear me! how odd! | Why here's the identical flower, | Which I sent to Kew, to be named by you, | A thing quite out of your power. | It was this - it was that - and I'll eat my hat | If ever I knew such a joke, | When at last you came to give it a name | 'Twas Jerusalem Artichoke!" | Says Thiselton Dyer, "To call you a liar | Is a thing I'd scorn to do, | But my meaning is plain, if you say that again | You'll be saying what is not true!"' Redesdale's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of Biography emphasises his 'cosmopolitanism' and 'dandy's charm', and the fact that he was 'busy with translations, addresses, and pamphlets to such an extent that he seemed, after the age of sixty-five, to have turned from an amateur into a professional man of letters'.…