Collection of autograph letters and manuscript material concerning moves during the First Anglo-Afghan War.

A carefully assembled collection of material connected to players in the "great game", including Colonel Stoddart and Captain Arthur Conolly, both famously beheaded at Bukhara, Major Henry Rawlinson, the political agent at Kandahar, and Captain Sir Alexander "Bukhara" Burns. The material, mounted on album leaves with accompanying newspaper clippings and other ephemera, is tied together by Connolly and Stoddart's dramatic death. Sent on a mission to secure an agreement of friendship between Britain and the Emir of Bukhara, in 1838 Stoddart was arrested by the emir on charges of spying and imprisoned. Conolly, the intelligence agent credited with coining the term "great game" in an 1840 letter to Rawlinson, arrived in Bukhara in late 1841 to negotiate his compatriot's release. Both men were killed in June 1842 and became household names back home. In the first two letters, Burns, writing about a year before he was killed by a mob in Kabul, shares his views with Rawlinson on the latest moves in the "great game". He writes of Stoddart's (short-lived) release from prison and of the importance of Conolly's current intelligence-gathering in Central Asia. Shah Shuja "is surrounded by a parcel of harpies", and Burns advises caution about the use of British troops to prop up the Shah's rule: "Nothing contributes so much to lower the King's power as the employment of our troops against Afghans & I would avoid it if possible." As for Lord Auckland, the governor-general "does not have great faith in the sincerity of Russia in abandoning her Khiva designs but it gives us time." The third letter, from Conolly to Rawlinson, discusses local news and offers a lighter-hearted window onto the life of a political agent far from home. He has swapped the diplomatic chessboard for the card table: "We miss you very much - especially at whist", the previous night's rubber being "stale and flat, but not unprofitable, for I won 9 rupees." This letter is mounted with a page of Stoddart's notes on taking navigational bearings, which Stoddart gave to Rawlinson before departing for Central Asia in 1837. The final piece touches on the wider appeal of the Stoddart-Conolly story. Writing to the Cornish baronet Sir Hugh Molesworth almost two decades later, Dr Joseph Wolff mentions his second expedition to Bokhara, mounted to ascertain the fate of the two men, and how the profits from the two editions of his best-selling Narrative of a mission to Bokhara (1845) were sufficient to finance a parsonage and schoolhouse in his living. a) Sir Alexander Burns to Major Henry Rawlinson, 21 December 1840, Kabul. ALS, bifolium, written across all sides. b) Sir Alexander Burns to Major Henry Rawlinson, 20 January 1841, Kabul. ALS, bifolium, written across all sides. c) Captain Arthur Conolly to Major Henry Rawlinson, 1840, Kabul. ALS, bifolium and single sheet, written across 5 sides, addressed on final side, remains of wax seal. d) Colonel Stoddart's autograph notes on taking navigational bearings, single sheet, written one side. Endorsed on verso by Rawlinson, "Given to me by Col. Stoddart on his departure for Bokhara in 1837. H. Rawlinson"; later note to the same effect, but in a different hand, below. e) Revd Dr Joseph Wolff to Revd Sir Hugh H. Molesworth, 31 August 1859, Taunton, Somerset. ALS, bifolium, written across 3 sides. 4 autograph letters and single sheet of notes, totalling 17 sides of manuscript, tipped to or mounted on stubs to card album leaves (370 x 265 mm), with laid-down material (11 newspaper clippings, 2 printed illustrations, sheet of manuscript), later brief captions in manuscript. Letters and sheet of notes generally well preserved, staining and creasing as expected, stubs occasionally just touching text but no loss to sense: a very good collection.…