{"product_id":"friendship-album-album-of-poetry-watercolour-illustrations-and-sketches","title":"[FRIENDSHIP ALBUM.] Album of poetry, watercolour illustrations, and sketches.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e[FRIENDSHIP ALBUM.]\u003c\/strong\u003e Album of poetry, watercolour illustrations, and sketches. \u003ci\u003eLancashire?\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ec.\u003c\/i\u003e 1887–1893.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4to. Contemporary black roan, blind-stamped with central vignette to upper and lower boards of two classical figures presenting offerings to a statue, spine and edges gilt; pp. [149], on cream and pastel-coloured paper with 20 pp. of watercolour illustrations, sketches in pencil, and manuscript ephemera, some of which pasted or tipped in (\u003ci\u003esee below\u003c\/i\u003e), elegantly written in several hands in dark brown and black ink; headcap chipped and joints neatly repaired; occasionally wanting tipped-in material.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAn attractive nineteenth-century friendship album collecting poems, and a lively sequence of watercolours and pencil sketches contributed by eight or more different hands, including a number of additions likely made by children.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe literary selections, mostly dated between 1887 and 1893, include poetic extracts from Shakespeare’s \u003ci\u003eThe Winter’s Tale\u003c\/i\u003e (‘Susie White, March 1887’), together with work by the Victorian poets Charles Swain (1801–1874) and Thomas Hood (1799–1845) (‘Percy Naylor, 22\/11\/90’). The range of contributors and dates suggests an album actively used and added to over several years.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe drawings range from more assured studies of flora and fauna to others of a charmingly naïve and expressive character, \u003cstrong\u003esuggesting contributions by hands of differing experience, and likely including children or younger family members\u003c\/strong\u003e. Particularly attractive are the period ‘copy’ illustrations made from printed sources, among them a drawing after Lancelot Speed’s Mother Holle for Lang’s \u003ci\u003eRed Fairy Book\u003c\/i\u003e (‘H. K. 1893’) and a careful copy after an engraved costume design for Rossini’s \u003ci\u003eGuillaume Tell\u003c\/i\u003e. A pleasing local note is provided by a view of Bolton-le-Sands, Lancashire, accompanied by an extract from Wordsworth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’ (‘HJK. 93’).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe volume as a whole preserves a small but vivid cross-section of late nineteenth-century domestic creativity across a range of media, illustrating the friendship album as a space for shared quotation, copying, and artistic expression, often bridging generations within a family or social circle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2124468\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sotherans","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56881794318713,"sku":"2124468","price":450.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2124468b.jpg?v=1774041498","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/products\/friendship-album-album-of-poetry-watercolour-illustrations-and-sketches","provider":"Sotherans","version":"1.0","type":"link"}