(NEW YORK CITY) Correspondence of literary figure George Gri

Sale 2546 - Lot 168

Price Realized: $ 1,750

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500

(NEW YORK CITY.) Correspondence of literary figure George Griffin. 55 items in one folder, condition generally strong. Vp, 1829-55

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

George Griffin (1778-1860) was raised in East Haddam, CT, graduated from Yale in 1797, and became a successful lawyer in New York City. He was also prominent in literary and theological circles. The lot consists of personal and literary letters to Griffin, as well as his daughter Caroline Lydia Griffin (1820-1861).
The most prominent correspondent here is Lydia Sigourney of Hartford, CT, one of the most famed poets of her day, though largely forgotten now. The 5 items include: a 22 August 1836 Autograph Letter Signed including her poem "On the Death of Zerlina Thorne" (soon to be published in the Evangelical Magazine of 1 October) 10 February 1842 Autograph Letter Signed, mostly devoted to her efforts to meet with the visiting Charles Dickens, and including her poem "Welcome to Charles Dickens, Esq." which was read to him at a banquet in Hartford two days earlier (later published in Charles Dickens in America, page 96) 23 April 1850 Autograph Letter Signed Signed holograph poem, "Friendship with the Dead, Occasioned by Recollections of the Rev'd E.D. Griffin," from her 1835 book "Zinzendorff and Other Poems," undated Poem credited to Sigourney but in a different hand, "On the Parting of the Rev'd E.D. Griffin with his Little Sister," published in American Ladies Magazine in 1834.
Other highlights include a short Autograph Letter Signed from John C. Calhoun to Supreme Court Justice Henry Baldwin, concerning the appointment of [Patrick Alden] Farrelly as a cadet, circa March 1840; and 24 letters from theologian James Waddell Alexander to Caroline Griffin from 1845-1855. Other correspondents include Sanitary Commission founder Henry W. Bellows, sculptor Horatio Greenough (sending a bust in marble of deceased son Edward Dorr Griffin in 1834), historian William Hickling Prescott (2 letters), Episcopalian bishops Alonzo Potter and John Henry Hobart (3), and Hungarian statesman Lajos Kossuth.