Florence Nightingale | Scrapbook of drawings, plates, and photographs

Florence Nightingale

Scrapbook of drawings, plates, and photographs

8vo (211 x 134mm.), containing 144 engraved plates, some hand-coloured, including architecture and costume plates, 8 watercolour drawings, 7 pencil drawings, 5 ink drawings, 2 albumen print photographs, pasted onto 86 leaves, some items signed on lower margin (68 signed 'P'; 49 signed 'Pd'), a few captioned in ink on mounts, 2 leaves watermarked 1823, 1 leaf watermarked 1821, bookseller's ticket of Langley of Mansfield, nineteenth century half morocco over marbled boards, leaves uncut, creasing and spotting, slight worming, extremities rubbed

Including a pencil sketch of Dethick Castle, near to where the Nightingale family spent their summers in Derbyshire; a photograph of Mottisfont, Romsey, very close to Embley Park.

The binding and contents of the present lot closely resemble those of two scrapbooks, dated 1827 on the spines, belonging to Florence and Parthenope respectively, held at the Verney and Nightingale family archives at Claydon House. Various prints and drawings in Florence's scrapbook at Claydon House bear an ink "P" in the corners (including almost every drawing on the first 20 pages), as does one item in Parthenope's scrapbook.

The inclusion of two gelatin print photographs complicates the idea that the present scrapbook was compiled in the 1820s, as do two engraved plates mounted on consecutive leaves captioned "Egypt" and "Germany" (visited by Florence in 1849 and 1850 respectively). However, Parthenope's sketchbook at Claydon House also includes a few items which are obviously of a later date, including a drawing of Llangollen, dated 1836. 

We are grateful for the assistance of Mrs Susan Baxter, archivist of Claydon House, in the research and cataloguing of this lot.

PROVENANCE

Florence Nightingale: engraving to front pastedown, labelled in manuscript "MDCCCXXV Florence"; presented by Frances Parthenope Verney (1819-1890) to Harriet Roud (plausibly a Harriet Roud of Wellow, d.1905): presentation inscription in Parthenope's hand to front pastedown ("Miss Florence Nightingale. | Harriet Roud"), plus tipped-in pencil note, also in Parthenope's hand, addressed to "Harriet" and presenting her with "a bag which I once made for my dear mother & a picture book which belonged to Miss Florence when she was a child" (i.e. the present volume); given by Harriet Roud to Elsie M. Vidler: letter of 30 June 1916 detailing early provenance and offering the volume to an "auction sale in aid of the Le Touquet Hospital"; bought by Mrs Robinson (of Dorchester?); thence by descent to the Revd. Peter Whitfield Gallup (1906-1998): manuscript note, dated 1968, in Revd. Gallup's hand loosely inserted