Add MS 89644

Leather-bound book, embossed with the title "Robert Browning Hall Visitors Book", used as the visitors book for the chapel of the Robert Browning Settlement of Walworth, London between 1895 and 1994.

The book is signed throughout by a variety of individuals, beginning with Herbert Henry Asquith, who inaugurated the settlement in 1895. Other signatories include Ernest and Emily Shackleton, Emily Barrett Browning, the poet Edmund Gosse, Samuel Gompers, Renee de Montmort, Saint Nihal Singh, Ethel Snowden, John Henry Barrows, Joseph James Curling, and Clare Sheridan, as well as visitors to the settlement from America, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and across the United Kingdom.

The book also records visits by groups including a choir of Welsh quarrymen, attendees at commemorations of Browning's life, and attendees of meetings and conferences held at the settlement, including meetings of labour organisation, conferences on Old Age Pensions and similar matters relating to the labour movement.

Also pasted into the volume is a printed note commemorating a 1928 visit to the Settlement by the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, opposite their signatures.

Inserted in the volume in a section devoted to attendees of a conference celebrating the 17th Anniversary of the 1899 Hague conference are two sheets, one listing three signatories of an appeal in support of the settlement, the other a reproduction of Robert Browning's poem, Heroes.