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
April 23
On This Day
On this day in 1858 Dame Ethel Smyth was born. Her father, John Hall Smyth, was a Major-General in the Royal Artillery, and he very much opposed her making a career in music. Undeterred, Smyth was determined to become a composer, studied with a private tutor, and then attended the Leipzig Conservatory, where she met many composers of the day and went on to be made a Dame.
In 1956 the Novelist C. S. Lewis married the poet Joy Davidman at the register office in Oxford, England. Although their relationship was founded on their intellectual connection he was devastated by her early death from cancer and wrote 'A Grief Observed', originally under a pseudonym. Ironically, many friends recommended the book to Lewis as a method for dealing with his own grief.
SMYTH (Dame Ethel, 1858-1944, Composer, Writer & Suffragette)
Autograph Letter Signed to Mrs Hunter, (Hylda, sister of Sir Eldon Gorst, Consul-General in Cairo, and wife of Captain George G. Hunter, before WWI attached to the British Agency), asking her “most kindly to send on this to Mrs Wild”, explaining that she is writing “(in a book that comes out in May or sooner) the story of my delightful Egyptian winter”, 3 sides oblong 8vo., Coign, Woking, 18th January 1935
55519
LEWIS (C. S., 1898-1963, Writer & Scholar, Author of ‘The Screwtape Letters’)
Typed Letter Signed (‘C. S. Lewis’) to “My dear June” saying that he is “waiting for a suitable moment to show Warnie the cutting. It is more like the N.I.C.E. than I should have beleived [sic] possible. I’m afraid ‘Our Town’ will be out of the question, but all good wishes. I liked your performance in the ‘Octopus’ and thought your ghost career a complete success ... more interesting than Act I ...”, 1 side oblong 4to., with original autograph envelope signed with initials, Magdalen College, Oxford, 26th October 1945
36817
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