Every day Sophie Dupre presents two items from her large stock of signed photographs, autograph letters, autographs for sale, royal memoralbilia and antiquarian manuscripts.
The photographs are presented with the catalogue descriptions.
On this day... see what happened on your special day
November 16
ON THIS DAY
On this day in 1825 Watts Phillips was born. He was an English illustrator, novelist and playwright best known for his play The Dead Heart which served as a model for Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.
In 1873 W. C. Handy was born. He was an American composer and musician known as the "Father of the Blues".
PHILLIPS (Watts, 1825-1874, Illustrator, Playwright and Novelist)
Enchanting series of Illustrated Letters to William Miller ORD, M.D., (1834-1902, Medical Scientist and Physician, for fifty years at St Thomas’s Hospital, London), to Ords second wife Jane, (née Youl), the Ordss daughter Christine and dog Tartar, with one or two by Caroline (Huskisson), known as Mrs Phillips, also humorous drawings and a title leaf for “Jane Ords Album”, the letters are full of energy, puns and literary allusions, nearly all with one or more extremely skilful and witty pen-drawings. Besides Phillips’s own troubles, for Ords care of which he is extremely grateful, Phillips refers to invitations to the Ordss home in Streatham, imagines their holidays in Northumberland and Swanage, adding his reminiscences of both districts, and talks of the pressure of keeping up his writing (see No. 38, showing him chained to an inkpot like Prometheus to his rock), with much more. With a Checklist. Together 58 items on 99 sides (including 4½ sides by Mrs Caroline Phillips), mostly 8vo, 45 Redcliffe Road (off the Fulham Road), West Brompton, London, 16th January - 31st December 1873 and circa February - April 1874
56645
HANDY (William Christopher, 1873-1958, American composer and musician, known as the "Father of the Blues")
Fine Photograph signed and inscribed showing him half length seated at a piano, 10” x 8”, no place, 12th March 1959
38634
Click on images to view more details
