LEAR, Edward (1812-1888). Autograph letter signed ('Edward Lear') to [Montagu Yeats] Brown, Villa Emily, San Remo, 21 November - 22 December 1880, including a transcription of an 8-line epigram, 4 pages, large 8vo (remnant of tape to inner margin of both leaves). Provenance: Montagu Yeats Brown (1834-1921), British consul in Genoa -- presented to his wife, Agnes, née Bellingham, in 1893.

LEAR, Edward (1812-1888). Autograph letter signed ('Edward Lear') to [Montagu Yeats] Brown, Villa Emily, San Remo, 21 November - 22 December 1880, including a transcription of an 8-line epigram, 4 pages, large 8vo (remnant of tape to inner margin of both leaves). Provenance: Montagu Yeats Brown (1834-1921), British consul in Genoa -- presented to his wife, Agnes, née Bellingham, in 1893.

'I AM CERTAINLY AN UNLUCKY FELLOW IN SOME THINGS'. Lear begins his letter with a suggestion that he may visit Corsica, even though 'my painting room is no longer available', but the letter is then interrupted for a month both by the visits of friends and by 'a bad fall in my room -- (by catching my foot in the leg of a chair on my blind side)', not to mention the damage inflicted on his remaining eye by 'the blazing whitewash of the infernal Shuttleworth-Hanbury Hotel [which had been constructed directly in front of Lear's house in San Remo]': Lear transcribes 'a clever Epigram' sent to him on the subject of Miss Shuttleworth's expressions of regret for this abomination; happily his own new house will be ready in a few months. Amongst other news and enquiries in a chatty letter (including a passing reference to Garibaldi, 'It is sad that he should so outlive the good opinion of many of his countrymen'), he refers to the Book of Nonsense: 'take care of the Book of Nonsense: for the odious publisher has become bankrupt, & not only that; but he has lost or embezzled all the wood block illustrations, so that the whole of the books are out of print, & can never be got no more never by nobody ... I am certainly an unlucky fellow in some things'.