A mid-Victorian lady’s drawing-room commonplace album, compi...

Hammer

£140

A mid-Victorian lady’s drawing-room commonplace album, compiled by Ellen ‘Nellie’ Shirley, dated from 14th February 1865, comprising verses addressed to ‘Nellie’ by her friends on leaving Evesham College and returning to Manchester, illustrated with botanical still lives in watercolour &/or pencil, further chromolithograph scraps and prints of flowers, further verse and prose, etc., contemporary red calf binding, blocked and picked-out in gilt, all edges gilt, 4to, (1); another similar, larger format and later in date, the property of Harriet Caggins, illustrated with 18 botanical, landscape, architectural, and topographical watercolours, including 2 of Venice, 6 similar pencil &/or pen-and-ink studies, further prints, including a Pear’s advertisement, ink manuscript commonplace verse and prose, conforming binding style, 4to, (1); an early 19th century European lady’s album, probably French, illustrated with some well-executed watercolours by different hands, including an allegory of love, mostly monochrome mixed media prints, finely bound in contemporary (?Parisian) red morocco gilt, oblong 8vo, (1); a late Victorian ink MS commonplace ‘journal’, partially-inscribed with contemporary transcriptions of society events from periodicals, contemporary green morocco gilt, upper-cover with owner’s monogram, clasp fastening (faults), 4to, (1), [4]