Eminent Georgians and Victorians The Page family autograph album

Eminent Georgians and Victorians The Page family autograph album containing approx. 300 autograph letters signed, signed documents and sentiments, and clipped signatures. Complete autograph letters signed (all 1 p. unless otherwise stated) include: Richard Wagner (1813-1883), composer, Lucerne, 1868, to Mr Matthieu, in German, concerning the payment of a bill or debt, signed 'Rich. Wagner', partially browned; Henry James (1843-1916), novelist, 13 De Vere Mansions, London, undated, to Mrs Stevenson, recommending American dentists, 4 pp. (final page pasted down); Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), novelist, to Miss Hall, accepting an invitation, 2 pp.; Josef Ludwig von Armansberg (1787-1853), Bavarian statesman and regent of Greece, 1852, in German; Joseph Lister (1827-1912), pioneer of antiseptic surgery, 1883, accepting an invitation; Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Skerryvore, 1886, presenting his autograph; William Thompson, 1st Baron Kelvin (1824-1907), mathematician and physicist, Roxburgh Hotel, Edinburgh, 1892, to Miss Fuller, fondly recalling meetings with her relatives (the letter annotated in pencil 'My uncle Frederick Fuller'), 3 pp.; Sir Francis Chantrey (1781-1841), sculptor, 1836, concerning his proposed design for a monument to Colonel Page; William Ellis (1794-1872), missionary in Hawaii, Polynesia and Madagascar, 1839, 3 pp.; Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), poet, 1871, presenting his autograph; Henry Addington, Viscount Sidmouth (1757-1844), prime minister 1801-4, York House, 1825, in the third person, thanking Colonel Page for his pamphlet on the poor laws; Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903), prime minister, signed 'Cranborne', 2 pp., Lord John Russell (1792-1878), prime minister, 2 pp.; Lady Elizabeth Craven (née Berkeley), margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Bayreuth (1750-1828), travel writer and society hostess, Florence, 28 September 1785, to Mrs Page, an impromptu letter of condolence on the death of her husband, signed 'E Craven', 3 pp.; Robert Moffat (1795-1883), missionary in Africa, 1871, 3 pp.; and others including: John Tyndall, physicist and discoverer of the greenhouse effect), to Mr Jones, on his (Tyndall's) marriage; John Everett Millais (artist); A. H. Sayce (Assyriologist); Dawson Turner (botanist and antiquary); Agnes Weston (Royal Navy philanthropist), 3 letters; Edmund Gosse (man of letters); Constance F. Gordon Cumming (traveller); Lord Carnarvon, politician (2 letters, to Colonel Page); Marquess of Lansdowne, politician; Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle, chancellor of the exchequer; Cardinal Vaughan; Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, and similar. Documents signed: Queen Victoria (1819-1901), manuscript document appointing George Fuller professor of civil engineering, Queen's College, Belfast, 1873, signed 'Victoria R' at head; Lord Castlereagh, printed passport issued to Colonel Page, 1814, signed by Castlereagh as foreign secretary, docketed 'Seen at the British Embassy, to go to England by order of H.E. The Duke of Wellington'. Clipped signatures: George III; William IV; George Canning; Robert Peel; Cardinal Newman; William Holman Hunt; Sir Samuel W. Baker; E. F. Benson; Napier of Magdala; and similar. Clipped sentiments, fragments of letters, and other items, signed: Charles Dickens (autograph envelope addressed to George Walter Thornbury, biographer of J. M. W. Turner, 1870); John Ruskin; Andrew Lang; Florence Nightingale; Thomas Carlyle; Coventry Patmore; and similar. 4to album, decorative cloth, spine defective, endpapers and a few initial leaves loose, related newspaper cuttings and photographs also pasted in, manuscript captions throughout Qty: (1) Provenance: ‘This album was compiled largely from documents left by Colonel Page, by my aunt, Miss Eliza Fuller, born 1822, who resided for many years at 14 Belmont, Bath, where she died on 31st Oct 1904, aged 82’ (manuscript note to front free endpaper). The letter from Viscount Sidmouth allows Colonel Page to be identified as the Frederick Page of Goldwell Park, Speen, Berkshire, who served as a deputy lieutenant for Berkshire and wrote the 1822 work The Principle of the English Poor Laws.