Add MS 63596

CASEMENT PETITION PAPERS: correspondence and papers of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Clement K. Shorter, editor of The Sphere, concerning their petition to the government to reprieve Roger Casement, sentenced to death for high treason, 29 June 1916; 1916. Partly printed. Purchased from David J. Holmes Autographs, Philadelphia, Cat. II, lot 62, 7 Aug. 1985.

Paper; ff. 176. Individual items mounted and bound in dark green morocco with gilt tooling, including Irish emblems, by Rivière, in a cloth slipcase. 288 x 233mm.

1. ff. 2-3. One of twelve privately printed copies of A Petition to the Prime Minister on behalf of Roger Casement by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1916).

2. ff. 4-22. Correspondence between Conan Doyle and Shorter, July 1916, including a draft, 2 July, to Shorter from G. Gavan Duffy, Casement's solicitor; letters to Doyle and Shorter from the Home Office acknowledging receipt of the Petition; and a letter from Shorter on the same subject, 26, 27 July; 2-30 July 1916, n.d.

3. ff. 23-61. Thirty-seven printed petitions, returned to Shorter, signed by supporters, the latter include: William Archer, Arnold Bennett, G. K. Chesterton, Will Crooks, John Drinkwater, John Galsworthy, Alice Gomme, Maurice Hewlett, Jerome K. Jerome, John Masefield, H. W. Massingham, C. P. Scott, Ben Tillett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and Israel Zangwill.

4. ff. 62-75. Newscutting from the New York American; 14 March 1915. Printed. Containing Casement's allegation that Britain tried to kidnap him in Norway.

5. ff. 76-176. Eighty-six letters, eighty-four of them to Shorter and two to Conan Doyle, relating to the petition, from supporters and opposers; 1916. The writers include: Alfred Austin, John Burns, Viscount Bryce, Sidney Colvin, Edward Carpenter, J. L. Garvin, Viscount Haldane, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Pinero, Eden Phillpotts, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells and W. B. Yeats. Two replies were written copies of the standard letter sent out with the petition by Shorter on 7 July.