STANLEY, Henry Morton.

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The Autobiography. Edited by his Wife Dorothy Stanley. First British edition, signed limited issue, number 68 of 250 copies signed and numbered by Dorothy Stanley. The first nine chapters cover Stanley's difficult childhood, which moulded his character and "overpowering ambition" (ODNB). Lady Dorothy "Dolly" Stanley (1855-1926) notes in her preface: "The pathos of this Autobiography lies in the deprivations and denials of those early years, here recorded for the first time. Yet these sufferings, as he came to realize, were shaping and fitting him for the great work he was to perform" (p. vi). Stanley was an illegitimate child, born John Rowlands to a teenage mother. She abandoned him shortly after his birth and parts of his childhood were spent in the St Asaph Workhouse for the Poor. He later reinvented himself as Henry Stanley, borrowing the name of a local cotton merchant."The autobiography gives full rein to the bitterness he felt at his early abandonment to the workhouse system, the remedy of a 'dull-witted nation' (p. 11). Stanley's shame about his illegitimacy, and resentment at his treatment as a child, fuelled an intense feeling of isolation, together with an overpowering ambition to prove his worth to the world" (ODNB).A talented painter and illustrator, Dorothy Stanley was one of the first women to enroll at the Slade School of Art, where she studied under Edward Poynter and Alphonse Legros. She was among the early generation of women to exhibit nude studies. She al

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