£882
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs | 792
Auction: 19 June 2024 from 10:00 BST
[London,] 56 Albemarle St, 7th December 1857. Single bifolium (18.2 x 11cm), written on 3 sides, declining an invitation (presumably to Rawson's seat of Wincobank Hall, Sheffield), recipient identified in a separate hand. Together with 2 small pieces of wood (3.5 x 5cm and 1.5 x 6cm) both with old manuscript labels identifying them as being from the tree 'under which was buried the heart of Dr Livingstone' at Chitambo in 1873, one piece pasted to a 20th-century annotated card mount containing two leaves affixed via card ribbons, the mount connected to an envelope with 19th-century manuscript docket 'Leaves from the tree under which Livingstone's heart was buried, given by the Rev R. Stewart Wright', the envelope containing two further leaves
By descent from the recipient to David R. Wilson (1926-2020), bookseller and ornithologist (obituary: British Birds, vol. 113, issue 9, pp 560–561).
R. Stewart Wright (1858-1932) was an Edinburgh-born missionary with the London Missionary Society in Africa.