The subject of this letter must be the English actor G.F. Cooke (1756-1812); according to the Dictionary of National Biography his career was plagued by alcoholism. His journal is still in existence, preserved in the Harvard University Theatre Collection.

Oxford University Press At the Clarendon Press, 1963.  1st Edition.

8vo. Xiv + 235 pages. Colour frontispiece and other illustrations as listed. Internally clean, with a light crease on a few pages. The top edge a little dusty when the book closed. In the original blue hardback binding, very good condition. A small circular indentation on the back cover.

Sir Walter writes to a female correspondent, that ‘The little pamphlet, to which you refer’ can be got from any bookseller for a shilling. He refers her to ‘two papers of mine on the same subject’ published in Atlanta magazine last year, signing the letter at the end.

  A collection of many hundreds of pages of manuscript material by this gifted female composer, focusing on four works.  Two of the works are present in finished form, one in full orchestral score.  The most interesting of these works, The Teraph, can be largely reconstructed from the vocal and orchestral parts.  At times she reaches out from the conventional, drawing on folk music, with echos of Wagner and Liszt.