Bamfords Auctioneers & Valuers
Lot 4054
An early 19th century Anglo-Scottish lady's commonplace book, compiled and curated by Maria Duff, inscribed with various MSS, including select passages of Lord Byron's oeuvres, further Romantic verse, prose and maxims, select passages and original compositions, unusual early Shakespearean cartoon of stick figures: Shakespeare Illustrated, Nos. 1 and 2, 1822, illustrated with contemporaneous engravings, etchings and chromolithographs, comprising some caricatures, portraits, Picturesque British topography and sentimental scenes, one page with dried foliage specimen, embossed paper fancies and further amusements, recto of blue endpaper applied with a rectangular paper framed embossed by Dobbs with roses and thistles and inscribed in ink MS with verse on the pleasures and tribulations of life, the verso of the endpaper inscribed MHS to Maria Duff, August 1822, within a cut pink paper garland of flowers and laurels, later presentation inscription, full Regency oxblood morocco binding, gilt-embossed with foliate fillet and tendrils, Gothick tracery, the spine with alternating foliate bosses within raised bands, gilt-edged leaves, tall 4toProvenance: almost certainly the same Maria Duff (b. 1796), daughter of Maj.-Gen. Patrick "Tiger" Duff of Carnousie, who married Francis Garden-Campbell, 7th of Troup and of Glenlyon (1793-1826) on September 25th 1822 at St Marylebone, London. The date of 1822 at the beginning of her commonplace book could very well indicate that the volume was a gift and companion for her on reaching the maturity of a wife and leaving girlhood behind. A year after her widowhood the then Mrs. Maria Garden-Campbell married, as her second husband, James Ramsay (b. 1797), the second son of John and Mary Ramsay of Barra, at Westminster on August 13th 1827.
