Manuscript letters from a South Australian colonist to his two brothers in London. Adelaide, 17 April 1854.

A$200 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

I. Entire letter, [4] pp., octavo bifolium, manuscript in ink on watermarked wove paper; headed Adelaide, South Australia, April 17th 1854 , addressed to My dear Bob , and signed your affectionately attached Bro., G. E. Gladstones ; the letter is written in a very legible hand, and is complete and in fine condition; it is accompanied by the original mailing envelope (80 x 130 mm), the front addressed to Mr Gladstones, 3 Little Love Lane, Wood Street, Cheapside, London , annotated in the same hand Per Steam Ship Sir John Harvey to Melbourne thence per Croesus via Southampton , and with circular PAID / ADELAIDE / AP 1854 in red; verso with boxed LIVERPOOL SHIP / 21 JY 1854 in black and circular HV / JY 22 1854 in brown. The writer of this letter, G. E. (George Edward?) Gladstones, was a true cockney from Cheapside on the eastern edge of the City of London. Although Cheapside was surrounded by some of the poorest neighbourhoods in London, it was in fact one of the most prosperous parts of the city in the nineteenth century, even considered by some to be the busiest commercial thoroughfare in the world; it is perhaps no surprise, then, that from his writing we see that Gladstones was reasonably well educated and literate. He was almost certainly a member of the same Gladstones family who were associated with warehouse operation in Cheapside, at least from the 1820s and up into the 1840s. Gladstones had evidently emigrated to South Australia a year or two before the date of this l

• Binding: Hardcover

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