Beschreibung:

Collection of letters to the penal reformer Matthew Davenport Hill and members of his family, including his daughters and fellow reformers Rosamond and Florence, comprising letters by W.M. Thackeray (succinct dinner invitation written on a small scrap of paper), Annie Thackeray Ritchie (to Rosamond, about a penal matter: "Ones heart doesn't come to hand at thirty as it did at twenty - I mean its more difficult to write just because one has written - but certainly this is a subject to care about & I should be very glad if anything I could say could be of any use", with one to Florence), T.B. Macaulay, Maria Edgeworth (fragment, presented to Hill by her brother-in-law), Lord Shaftesbury ("...I am not a little proud of your praise for my 'Indian Speech'..."), Cardinal Newman, Elihu Burritt, Richard Cobden (two fine letters, on the Conference on Reformatory Discipline, 1859, and the Penal Servitude Bill, 1864), J.A. Froude (two letters, one as editor of Fraser's Magazine: "I am sorry I cannot return you your MS. - we uniformly destroy the MSS. when we have not been previously informed that the Author wishes to have them again..."), Dinah M. Craik, Clara Montalba (to Florence), Sir Robert Peel C.M. Younge, Octavia Hill, Baron von Humboldt, Henry Fawcett, Daniel O'Connell, Giuseppe Garibaldi (fragment), and others, heading cut from Shaftesbury letter, O'Connell letter taped, minor dust-staining etc., mostly mid 19th century