Add MS 62112

REPTON MEMOIRS: the second part of the memoirs of Humphrey Repton, landscape architect; circa 1814. Copy, apparently made by a member of his family, circa 1865, with many additions and deletions in the same and another hand; those signed 'MER' and dated 1865 may be by his daughter-in-law, Mary Ellis Repton. The manuscript begins with the heading, 'Part 2d Anno Dom: 1788', and goes on to describe the beginning of Repton's career as a landscape architect. Included are three fragments apparently from the original, the last a pictorial tail-piece by Repton, with the note, 'for the last page of my Life, &c' (ff. 135, 140, 235). The memoirs were first used in print in a biographical preface by 'A. B.' (John Adey Repton), in John Claudius Loudon's edition, The Landscape Gardening and Landscape Architecture of the late Humphrey Repton (1840), but the original has always remained undiscovered; see Dorothy Stroud, Humphrey Repton (1962), pp. 13-14. Passages from the present copy are printed in the exhibition catalogue, Humphrey Repton, Landscape Gardener, eds. G. Carter, P. Goode and K. Laurie (1982), pp. 135-138; for the catalogue entry, see pp. 175-176. The volume also includes a letter from Helen Scott to Mrs Robbins, 1886 (f. 237), a family tree of the Fitch and Repton families, early 19th cent. (f. 241), and a fragment of a letter with a pen and ink drawing of Punch and Judy (f. 242). Purchased at Christie's, 4 Nov. 1981, lot 142 (although the sale cat. describes the manuscript as autograph).

Paper; ff. 242. 252 x 255mm.