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Auction: 24029 - Stamps and Covers of Great Britain
Lot: 5230

Great Britain
1840 One Penny Black
Plate 5
BK, close to large margins, tied by red Maltese Cross and straight line "Fenchurch St." to 1840 (27 Oct.) entire, superbly illustrated letter from George Cowell, an employee of the Albion Brewery, Stoke Newington, to his brother, Josiah, of the Wells & Perry Brewery, Chelmsford, the contents being a series of humorous prose or poems.
One entire page is filled with a marvellously executed maritime illustration depicting a harbour in a rough sea, a tall ship entering for shelter, the illustration framing the beginning of a prose reading "Man is like an island, he is surrounded by worldly water, exposed to the boisterous waves of earthly enjoyment, and the continual encroachments of pleasure on his deluded mind".
The internal leaves comprise a poem titled "I Love Pie" and a short story titled "No. 3, The Youth, to be continued" headed with a wonderful illustration of a school room showing a boy wearing a dunces hat, stood among seated students.
The reverse flaps contain further works of prose and verse including "Topsy' s Table Christmas Day", comments on marriage reading "None are more to be pitied than those men who have got fashionable women for their wives, like maggots in a cheese they quarrel over their grub, until they come down to the end of poverty".
A remarkable entire, from a known correspondence, only three of which bore four margined 1d. blacks; full of Victorian humour and charm.


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Estimate
£2,800 to £3,000

Starting price
£2500