A collection of printed documents and an ALS related to John Dinely's search for a wife.

£4,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A collection of very rare printed material and an ALS related to John Dinely’s eccentric search for a wife. Sir John Dinely (c.1729-1809), who styled himself “the Courteous Baronet”, was the son of Edward Goodere who died young and insane. Dinely inherited the baronetcy of his great-uncle but quickly ran through the money and was forced, through the assistance of his friends, to obtain the pension of “a Poor Knight of Windsor” which also entitled him to a grace-and-favour apartment in Windsor Castle. Sir John lived a peculiar life abstaining from “luxurious” foods such as meat, tea, sugar and butter, spending his days as a Royal hanger-on dressed in ancient clothes and holding a “formidable umbrella.” Dinely was also obsessed with genealogy and spent his days attempting to trace his lineage with the hope of recovering a vast fortune. In an attempt to raise cash, Dinely also decided to find himself a wife and began a highly unusual courtship in the press by placing advertisements in newspapers and producing his own printed broadsides and handbills appealing for willing female suitors to come forward and offer themselves as a potential wife. Dinely operated a financial sliding scale of investment with ladies under twenty-one years of age having to possess £300 p.a. from twenty-one to thirty years £500, and from thirty to forty £600. Of spinsters in the last category Dinely admits, “few will be eligible with less than a Thousand,” but “widows under forty-five will have such Abat

• Binding: Hardcover

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