polkinghorne winifred (1 Ergebnisse)

Hardcover. Zustand: Near Fine. Oblong octavo (7 ½" x 6"). Contains approximately 85 pages of manuscript entries, including many finely illustrated entries and original drawings. Owner's name in calligraphic script on front free endpaper: "Winifred Polkinghorne 55 Glenmore Road, Hampstead, London". Contemporary rose colored morocco over boards, with a floral design hand painted in color on the front cover, all edges gilt. The edges of the boards are rubbed, near fine. A splendid album containing two original watercolor cartoons by Fred Neher (best known for his syndicated gag panel, *Life's Like That*), five accomplished watercolor drawings, two full-page pencil sketches, and several autograph entries illustrated with pen & ink sketches and pencil vignettes. Born at Edmonton, North London in 1900, the young and popular "Polly" Polkinghorne kept her autograph album from 1919-30, with most entries dating from her voyage and nearly one-year sojourn in America from in 1925-26. The album contains entries from her passage to New York on board the R.M.S. Mauretania, her visit with her sister Hilda at Wilmette in North Chicago where she befriended Fred Neher, and her subsequent travels throughout America and return to England in January 1926. She returned to America in 1930, after which there is a gap in the album when she took up residence in Nebraska and Oregon. The entries resume and conclude in 1955 when Polkinghorne embarked on another overseas voyage from America to England. In addition to the two full page cartoons by Neher from 1925, titled: "Ain't We Got Gin" and "Three Cheers for Winnie!!", the album features a skillfully rendered comic watercolor portrait of a girl, titled: "All for the Love of a Girlie" made by an R.F.A. [Royal Fleet Auxiliary] officer in 1920, and a beautiful tipped in watercolor landscape painted by a Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. There is another impressive tipped in watercolor landscape, undoubtedly made by another male admirer, and Winnie's sister Hilda contributes a beautifully written two-page calligraphic welcoming note illustrated in watercolor. There is also a notable autograph entry written in African-American vernacular English, signed "Aunt Peggy," and four tipped in pieces of printed ephemera, including a folded chromolithographic menu from the R.M.S. Mauretania signed by several of Winnie's fellow passengers. An especially pleasing and poignant friendship or memory book, marking the end of an era of women's albums popular in Victorian England and throughout the 19th century in the United States.