(Suffragettes, W.S.P.U., D.H. Lawrence.) A Leather bound vis...

Hammer

£270

(Suffragettes, W.S.P.U., D.H. Lawrence.) A Leather bound visitor book 1912-1954 The Duke of Edinburgh Hotel, Barrow-in-Furness, and Tan Llan, Llanelltyd, containing signatures of D.H. Lawrence and Suffragette W.S.P.U. members. The Duke of Edinburgh Hotel, Barrow-in-Furness, attracted fashionable society and the artistic and literary elite in the pre WW1 years. Signatures/guests 1912-1914 include D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930); W.S.P.U. members Gwendoline E. Cook, Lilian Lenton (1891-1972), active member of the W.S.P.U., arrested and held hunger strikes multiple times, winner of a French Red Cross for her service in WWI, Elizabeth Grew, Emily & Maud Fussell; Laurence Housman (1865-1959), writer, artist & radical activist, Adolph Paul Oppé (1878-1957), British art historian, critic, art collector and museum official, Hugh Dalton (1887-1962), Maurice Grey, Janet & George Trevelyan, Ellen Melicant Cobden, R. Elliott Seabrooke, William Arnold-Forster (1886-1951), W. Walmesley White, Maurice Gray (1890-1918) etc etc, plus a few photographs post 1914, at the last entry for The Duke of Edinburgh Hotel, the hostess wrote "The Play is Ended", mounted photograph at the beginning of the album c.1912, possibly depicting the hostess. A gap in years follows before re-emerging at 'Tan Llan', Llanelltyd, Wales. Tan Llan gives a contrasting atmosphere of a refuge away from society, politics, and WW2; guests write short descriptions of their stay and the peace and beaty of their surroundings. The hostess is praised for her welcoming hospitality "After weeks of Air Raids & nightly bombing, this has been the MOST lovely & peaceful change" Ethel H. Dunbar Sewart, a regular visitor 1940-42. Signatures/inscriptions/addresses: Suffragette Lilian Lenton describes her address as "Al Large", 1-6th August, 1914, meeting D.H. Lawrence on his arrival (6-8th August.) Lawrence is known to have stayed following a walking tour of Westmoreland (where Elliott Seabrooke had also built a studio.) D.H. Lawrence signature and address clipped from a letter (likely to be a booking request.) Writer and social activist Janet Penrose Trevelyan (1879-1956,) her husband, the historian George Macaulay Trevelyan; Ellen Melicent Ashburner "Nellie" Cobden (1848-1914), was a suffragette, author & the first wife of the painter Walter Sickert; Artists, pacifist & actor R. Elliott Seabrooke (1886-1950); Frederick Bligh Bond (1864-1945) English architect, illustrator, archaeologist and physical researcher "Much enjoyed my rest after a rather strenuous time, and improved greatly under the care of my kind hostess" Aug. 5th, 1941. Mounted black & white photograph of the Tan Llan rooftops, looking towards the surrounding Welsh hills on leaf preceding 1944 entries, approx. 35 pages of manuscript entries in total spanning the period July 1912-c.1954. Oblong quarto leather bound tobacco brown traditional visitor book, decorative gilt border, all edges gilt, pale blue marbled end papers, approx. dimensions 21 x 26cm