Characters – Kirby (R. S.), The Wonderful and Scientific Mus...

Hammer

£380

Characters – Kirby (R. S.), The Wonderful and Scientific Museum or Magazine of Remarkable Characters including all the Curiosities of Nature and Art from the Remotest Period to the Present Time, drawn from every Authentic Source, 5 vols. of 6, London, T. Keating, 1803-1815, 8vo, each with MS autograph of Thos. Thistlethwayte on upper outer part of title page of each, uniformly bound, grey endpapers, quarter calf over grey boards, gilt lines and titles to spines, spines cracking and in places lacking, contents tight; Vol. I (1803): iv + 476pp, engraved frontis and 19 other engraved plates; II (1804): 486pp engraved frontis and 19 other engraved plates; III (1805): 430pp engraved frontis and 17 other engraved plates; IV (1813): 428pp engraved frontis and 18 other engraved plates; V (1815): 424pp engraved frontis and 19 other engraved plates.
***The signature of Thomas Thistlethwayte suggests that these volumes originally came from the library of Southwick Park Hants. Thomas Thistlethwayte was born 1779, the eldest surviving son of Robert Thistlethwaite of Southwick Park (which he inherited in 1802 and which was requisitioned by the War Office in 1939). He was briefly MP (Hants) and High Sheriff of the County in 1812. Lord Palmerston described him as ‘a very stupid but respectable young man…’ He married Mary Anne Guitton (died 1821) and then Tryphena, daughter of Henry Bathurst, Bishop of Norwich, leaving two sons and a daughter at his death in 1850