Beschreibung:

Collection of some forty autograph letters, etc., by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (asking that a fair copy of his revised will be prepared as soon as possible, and explaining that he wishes to make provision for trustees in the event of any of them dying, with one nominated to replace his wife, and asking that legacies be left in place pending final settlement, dated "June 10"); Robert Peel (fine series of fifteen autograph letters to his friend and agent David Wilkie RA, largely about his picture collection [much of which is now in the National Gallery], discussing inter alia paintings by Van Dyck and Velsaquez, 1827-38); William Wilberforce (to [Henry] Dundas, pleading on behalf of the Jersey Methodists [threatened with banishment for refusing military service under the Act of Union], 16 November 1798); George Bernard Shaw (exasperated lettercard, to a woman called Von Bank: "I hope they will carry you off to the Tower and shoot you", 27 April 1919), with her signed receipt for the sale of the card to Aeneas O'Neill for ten shillings, 15 January 1920; and Anthony Eden (complaining to Max Beaverbrook in 1958 that "Nasser will seek to re-assure the Americans & to drive us and our friends from authority in the Arabian peninsula"); together with a set of naval commissions on vellum in favour of William Parry (1705-1779), appointing him First Lieutenant of the Ruby (1740), and successively Rear Admiral of the Blue (1762), Vice Admiral of the White (March 1775) and of the Red (December 1775), the first signed by Wager, the last two by Sandwich; and pages torn from the visitors book of the Clarendon Hotel, [New Bond Street, London], 1831, the Peel letters formerly mounted, some dust-staining etc., 4to and 8vo, 1740-1920