Catalogue of Carlyle's House
[CARLYLE.]
Illustrated memorial Volume of the Carlyle’s House purchase fund Committee with Catalogue of Carlyle’s Books Manuscripts Pictures and Furniture exhibited therein. London, The Carlyle’s House Memorial Trust, [1896].
8vo, pp. vi, [2], 160, with half-title, frontispiece portrait, illustrations and one double-page plate by J. Louis Knight (reproducing the painting ‘A Chelsea Interior’ by Robert Tait); a very good copy in contemporary half cream buckram, marbled paper sides, top edge gilt; gift inscription dated May 1897 to Florence Peacock, likely the poet, editor and essayist Florence Mary Woodruffe Peacock (1855–1900), from ‘E. M. W.
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Illustrated memorial Volume of the Carlyle’s House purchase fund Committee with Catalogue of Carlyle’s Books Manuscripts Pictures and Furniture exhibited therein.
First edition of an uncommon commemorative volume outlining the history of the purchase of Thomas Carlyle’s house at 24 (previously 5) Cheyne Row after a campaign led by George Lumsden, with an illustrated description of the house, a full catalogue of its contents, a Carlyle chronology, a list of subscribers, and the articles of association of the memorial trust.
The Carlyles had lived in Cheyne Row since 1834, but after Thomas’s death in 1881 the house had passed to new tenants and Lumsden found it ‘dingy and dirty’ and neglected. A public subscription was opened for its purchase (18 pages of subscribers are listed here, including William Waldorf Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Pierpont Morgan, Lord Rothschild, Lord Rosebery), and the house was saved in December 1895. It was transferred to the National Trust in 1934.
The catalogue (pp. 73–101) details the contents of all the bookcases (noting presentation inscriptions and Carlyle’s annotations), as well as the pictures and objects, noting who has lent or donated them.