Americana. An 1884 Lett's Office Diary and Almanac, possibly...

Hammer

£90

Americana. An 1884 Lett's Office Diary and Almanac, possibly kept by Bartley Theodore Campbell (1843-1888), the American journalist, author and theatrical impresario, approx. [360]pp of MS, loosely-inserted ephemera, original publisher's cloth enclosed in their lockable morocco boards, marbled edges, 8vo 

On first inspection the attributable provenance of an English printed - and presumably retailed - diary to an American playwright seems unusual. However, a loosely-inserted saloon passenger list from the White Star Line's S.S. "Britannic", from Liverpool to New York, November 15th, 1883, shows Campbell as a passenger, in fact the sole passenger whose name is circled in pencil. His name is in fact repeated on the bound-in Lett's appendix. The diary's entries for the following year lend credence to the idea the diary was purchased in advance by Campbell while in England for use back home the following year: many of the entries refer to Jacksonville, a borough by the same name is located outside of Campbell's native Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

If Campbell's, the 1884 diary was kept two years before he was declared in insane in 1886, due to the strain of his lack of success and financial difficulties resulting therefrom, and kept four years before his death in the State Hospital for the Insane, New York, in 1888. It might explain the more quotidian nature of the diary, with its frequent references and lists of gardening and husbandry matters.