Lot No: 9296

[RUSKIN'S LAST AUTOGRAPH?]. 'The Portrait birthday-book of famous names', Seeley & Co, circa 1880. A 19th Century autograph album containing signatures of over 80 notable Victorian personages in the fields of Literature, the Arts etc, compiled by W. Craibe Angus of Glasgow who apparently distributed the pages of the book to various eminent people inviting them to write against the date of their birth. Entries include John Ruskin, Linley Sambourne (with caricature self-portrait & illustrated letter), Henry Irving, James McNeill Whistler (with his butterfly signature beneath), Ellen Terry, Richard Le Gallienne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Douglas Hyde, Edward Grey, W.E. Gladstone (with autograph postcard from his son W.H. Gladstone), Oliver Wendell Holmes, W.H. Hudson, Wallace Bruce (with ALS from the US consulate in Edinburgh). The main strength of the album being the Ruskin contribution, who was visited by Angus's friend William SInclair, Secretary of the Glasgow Ruskin Society: ''I put before Mr & Mrs Severn the request of my friend Mr Craibe angus for the autograph of the Master. Mrs Severn looked puzzled and said that the Master had not signed his name for over three years, and she was not hopeful that he could use a pen...taking with her the Album, Mrs Severn promised to do her best for me. On returning from the Drawing Room...she said, 'Well he has done it but it is a very feeble attempt'. We examined the autograph with the melancholy foreboding that it might be the last penned by the hand that wrote 'Modern Painters'. [Signed] William Sinclair. (Ruskin died five months later. This account of Sinclair's visit and a transcript of a subsequent letter from Mrs Severn to Angus, are finely inscribed in a manuscript border around the relevant opening. also tipped in is part of an earlier ALS written by Ruskin in 1868. The album c.250pp + 19pp index, each opening covering 3 days with space for autographs on facing pages, decorative borders & miniature portraits in line throughout; uncut in handsome brown crushed morocco ruled and titled in gold, top edge gilt, others uncut, by Zaehnsdorf. Further list of signatures included available on request.

Sale Price: £400.00