WADDINGTON, William Henry (French prime minister and diplomat, 1826-1894). A collection of correspondence to and from William Waddington and members of his family, 1820-1919, including approximately 150 autograph letters signed by William Waddington himself to his parents and other members of his family from Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge; other letters addressed to William's father Thomas Waddington by politicians and others in France and England; letters to William's wife, the social commentator Mary King Waddington, from Queen VICTORIA (letter of condolence, January 16, 1894, three days after William Waddington's death, 3 pages, 8vo), Princess Mary (letter of thanks for a gift of a parasol, June 13, 1893), and Queen Alexandra (6 letters on social matters, 1906-1919), and letters to William Waddington from the 15th Earl of Derby (as foreign secretary, 28 January 1887) and the 3rd Marquis of Salisbury (on matters of state, 16 August 1890), approximately 260 letters in total, in French and English, with a group of invitations, envelopes and related ephemera, including a menu signed by George V. The grandson of an English cotton manufacturer who had become a French citizen, Waddington was prime minister of France in 1879, and subsequently French ambassador in London from 1883 to 1893, a period acutely depicted by his American-born wife, Mary King Waddington, in her Letters of a Diplomat's Wife (1903).