Twenty-four letterpress and engraved lottery puffs uncut on one sheet. Each puff includes engravings of Twelfth night character by George Cruikshank and an 8-line poem.
Drawer 819.12.00.02
Acquired March 2024
Engraved card printed within black mourning border, illustrated above title with an image of a mourning Britannia and British Lion in front of Princess Charlotte‘s tomb, which is located under a weeping willow and is adorned with her portrait and topped with an urn. Sixteen lines of verse are engraved at the bottom, signed “J. Thompson”.
File 56 C47 817T
Acquired July 2023
Engraved broadside poem published shortly after the death of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, father of the future Queen Victoria. The verses also commemorate Princess Charlotte, three years after her untimely death in 1817. With six vignette illustrations: at the top are images of the Duke of Kent, Kensington Palace, and the Duchess of Kent; and at the foot are images of Prince Leopold, Claremont House, and Princess Charlotte.
File 56 C47 820V+
Acquired July 2023
Valentine writer comprising twenty-four comic valentine texts, many with small illustrations. Hand-colored folding plate with a comic valentine to a cook, above which is a red-nosed caricature.
Original self-wrappers, the upper with an engraved vignette of cupid firing an arrow from the center of a rose, titling above and imprint below, the whole in a double rule frame with decorative floral corner ornament.
File 19 820L
Acquired August 2023
Engraved card printed within black mourning border, illustrated above title with an image of Prince Leopold leaning mournfully over his wife Princess Charlotte’s tomb, which is adorned with her portrait and topped with an urn. Sixteen lines of verse are engraved at the bottom.
File 56 C47 817On No.2
Acquired November 2022
Heading to a broadside printed in two columns. Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, is dressed in an officer’s uniform and seated at a writing desk next to a window. He turns to gaze at a portrait on the wall of his mistress, Mary Anne Clark. Printed beneath the satirical illustration are a love poem and a quoted extract from a love letter, taken from the work ‘The Authentic and Impartial Life of Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke’ that was published after the Duke severed ties with her in 1809.
809.00.00.65+
Acquired November 2022
A memorial to Princess Charlotte of Wales, the overall design being an image of her tomb, including a portrait of the princess and a depiction of her funeral procession directly below. Engraved text within the columns of the tomb provide the details of the procession along with Charlotte’s biography.
File 56 C47 817Fu
Acquired August 2022
Frontispiece: The R-l great baby among the roses / Marks fec. King George IV, in caricature, naked except for breeches, reclines on a bed of roses, three large women (Mrs Quentin and her daughters) bend over him.
763 H942 820
Acquired February 2022
A poem, printed within black mourning border, illustrated above title with an image of an urn mounted on a plinth, her life dates engraved on the plinth; behind a weeping willow. Five stanzas of verse in letterpress at the bottom
File 56 C47 817P
Acquired February 2022
“Heading to a broadside printed in two columns. The King, a bloated and whiskered infant, sleeps in a cradle, rocked by Sidmouth (right), a lean old woman wearing a cap and bag-wig, who sits in a rocking-chair, his clyster-pipe (cf. British Museum Satires No. 9849) on the ground. The cradle is surmounted by a pagoda with bells, and ornamented by two large crocodiles, representing the Chinese dragons of the Pavilion, cf. British Museum Satires No. 12749. On it are also a sun, with a fool’s cap in its disk, between crescent moons. Round the cradle lie toys: soldiers, mounted lancers, &c., on wheels, a cannon, a sceptre, a crown with a toy windmill stuck in it. With these are papers: ‘Divorce’; ‘Protocal’ [sic]; ‘Send her to Hell’. The infant holds a coral and bells and a corkscrew. Castlereagh sits over the fire warming a napkin. Canning (see British Museum Satires No. 13737) walks off to the left, disgustedly carrying the pan of a commode decorated with a crown and ‘G.R.’ On the chimneypiece are pap-boat, bottle of ‘Dolby’s Carminative, &c’. (Dolby was a radical bookseller, ‘Dalby’s carminative’ a well-known remedy for infants). A large ‘Green Bag’ hangs on the wall. In a doorway behind Sidmouth, inscribed ‘French Dolls’, stand two young women, in evening dress, stiff and impassive.”–British Museum online catalogue.
820.07.00.01
Acquired November 2021