Skip to main content

This auction has ended. View lot details

You may also be interested in

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

Lot 173

SWINBURNE (ALGERNON CHARLES)

22 November 2011, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £400 inc. premium

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

How to sell

Looking for a similar item?

Our Books & Manuscripts specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.

Find your local specialist

Ask about this lot

SWINBURNE (ALGERNON CHARLES)

Autograph letter signed ("AC Swinburne"), to his sister Alice ("My dearest Ally"), giving vent to his well-known adoration of babies, in this case that of their cousin Maria ("...It's nothing to say that my mouth waters (though it does) – my whole soul & body yearn to kiss its feet. They don't mind that..."); telling her that the "whole custom of mourning in black paper or clothes seems to me absurd & vulgar & ostentatious"; grumbling about the summer ("...I am glad you are out of town, anyhow, tho' flies would make me cut my throat. The one thing that has tempered this exceptionally infernal summer to me has been their unusual absence at this time of year..."); and recommending where to stay ("...If you want a real old inn you should go to Newhaven & see the rooms in which Louis-Philippe & family slept the night after they fled from the Tuileries. Rather a change, & rather small & fusty, but lovely in shape & furniture..."), 4 pages, on mourning paper, 8vo, The Pines, 14 August 1899

Footnotes

SWINBURNE'S PLAY GOES TO THE PRINTER: this letter was sent the day Swinburne passed his play Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards for the press, as he tells his sister: "I have just this minute finished correcting the proofs of my forthcoming tragedy – so you will make allowance for epistolary brevity & stupidity". This is one of Swinburne's late plays that 'although not without some fine writing and a growing compression in form' is archaic in form and style and 'damaged by Swinburne's habit of writing for an imagined Elizabethan audience' (Rikky Rooksby, ODNB).

Additional information

Bid now on these items

ADVERTISING POSTERfor 'The Suffragette' newspaper, [c.1913-1914]

ARCHITECTURE - STUART (JAMES) AND NICHOLAS REVETT The Antiquities of Athens, 4 vol. bound in 2, 1825-1830

ILLUMINATED ADDRESS – CLARA CODD Illuminated printed address signed by Emmeline Pankhurst, [1909]

ARMENIAN - HISTORY, THEOLOGY AND PRINTING. Group of books/a map in Armenian, c.1825-1901 (12)

MUSIC & RECORDINGS – ETHEL SMYTH Collection of printed music, song sheets and records, [c.1911-1912]

BANK NOTES - MANUFACTURING BRADBURY (HENRY) On the Security and Manufacture of Bank Notes, FIRST EDITION, Bradbury and Evans, 1856