The Scrap Book. A Collection of Amusing Tales Anecdotes Sketches &c. &c. 'A thing of Shreds and Patches'.

Manuscript prose miscellany, 200 x 130mm, pp.(10)title & contents, 302; elaborate calligraphic title with water-colour vignette; contemporary half calf, morocco label, re-backed preserving worn original backstrip, faint later but not recent ownership inscription of ' Martha Crawford' at head of title. c80 pieces including: The Rose-Wood Trunk, The Rusty Nail, The Cockney's Journal, Escape from Prison, Wolf Hunting, Parody of a Poacher (from The Spirit of Public Journals for 1813), Zendonez or The Slave Chieftain by Grenville Fletcher (from The Portfolio of Entertaining and Instructive Varieties), &c. Very much in the style of the Regency keepsakes & Mrs Sherwood and evidently collected from the periodicals of the day. Some variation in the hand throughout would suggest that this was compiled over a period of several months, probably by the John Willis Borrowdale who, though born in Scotland, came to London where he married Ann Jones in 1826 and settled in Romford. Their ten children, including another John Willis (born 1834) will have enjoyed hearing the stories from their father's adolescent miscellany. …