2 scrapbooks of letters, fragments of letters, stamped or franked envelopes, and autographs, collected by Henry Austin Dobson and his wife Frances. Selected individuals represented are listed below.
Volume 1 includes letters written by: Sir Walter Besant; Thomas Hall Caine; Sir Edmund Gosse; Sir Mountstuart E Grant-Duff; Coventry Kersey Deighton Patmore; Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington; and Samuel Wesley (the composer).
Additional signatures in volume 1 include: Robert Browning and Bret Harte.
The volume also contains a religious poem by Hannah More (probably not in her own hand).
Volume 2 includes letters written by: Sir George Biddell Airy; Richard Ansdell; Anthony Ashley-Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury; Edward Bickersteth (the evangelical leader); Richard Doddridge Blackmore; Marc Isambard Brunel; Sir Andrew Buchanan; William Carus Wilson; William Henry Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, Duke of Portland; William Courtenay, Earl of Devon; Edward John Eyre; John Fane, Earl of Westmorland; Robert FitzRoy; Giuseppe Garibaldi; Sir Mountstuart E Grant-Duff; Kate Greenaway; William Walter Legge, Earl of Dartmouth; Charles Gordon-Lennox, Duke of Richmond; Robert James Mann; Friedrich Max Müller; Florence Nightingale; Clara Novello, Countess Gigliucci; Edward Bouverie Pusey; James Meadows Rendel; Edward Sabine (later Sir Edward); Alfred Tennyson, Lord Tennyson; Frederick Benjamin Twistleton[-Wykeham-Fiennes], Baron Saye and Sele; Rev Christopher Wordsworth (later Bishop of Lincoln); and Charlotte M Yonge.
Additional signatures in volume 2 include: William George Armstrong; Sir Charles Barry, Nathaniel Beardmore (Mrs Dobson's father) and other members of his family; Sir Charles Tilston Bright; Randolph Caldecott; George Canning; Sir Francis Leggatt Chantrey; Richard Cobden; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll); William Eward Gladstone; Benjamin Robert Haydon; William Hilton; Tom Hood (Thomas Hood the younger); Jean Ingelow; Sir William Jenner; Charles Kingsley; Henry Kingsley; Sir Charles Lyell; Giuseppe Mazzini; Horatio Nelson; Sir James Paget; Sir Robert Peel; George Ponsonby; Edward Sieveking (later Sir Edward); Sir William Smith ('Dictionary of the Bible' author); Richard Chevenix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin; Anthony Trollope; Horace Walpole (later Earl of Orford); Willoughby Hunter Weiss; Professor William Whewell.
The volume also contains a hymn written by James Montgomery for a member of the Beardmore family.
Many of the letters and autographs are undated.
Dobson , Henry Austin , 1840-1921 , poet and literary biographer