George du Maurier, cartoonist and writer : autograph note, signed, to fellow “Punch” artist Phil May. March, 1896.

A$220 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Signed

1 page manuscript in ink, 175 x 100 mm, on du Maurier s personalised notepaper with his embossed address 17, Oxford Square, W. , dated Sunday, March 29, 1896; to Phil May (1864-1903), English caricaturist. Du Maurier writes: My Dear May, I m in for another cold with this hearty weather so I don t feel up to tomorrow night s spree. Sorry. Yours ever, George du Maurier ; some light foxing and marginal staining, laid down recto of a leaf removed from a late nineteenth-century commonplace album (300 x 170 mm), with the owner s manuscript caption and note on provenance beneath: This was sent to Me by the Celebrated Artist Phil May Esq. in April 1896; vide his letter. J. E. Westley ; on the verso Westley has mounted a clipping from Punch with Du Maurier s last drawing for that magazine (26 September 1896), along with another clipping from The Argosy , Demerara (British Guiana!) 2 January 1897, which refers to theillustration in question. George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier (1834-1896) was a Franco-British cartoonist and writer best known for his work in Punch and for a Gothic novel Trilby , featuring the character Svengali, which was first published serially in Harper s Monthly in 1894. Du Maurier died somewhat suddenly on 8 October 1896, only six months after this note was written, in which he expressed a fear of catching another cold. Philip William Phil May (1864-1903) was an English caricaturist whose style of illustration was an immediate precursor to the modern humorous c

• Binding: Hardcover

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