Who's Who and What's What in Nineteenth-Century England

Late 1890s. Hardcover. Very Good+. Marbled paper over boards, red leather backstrip; 4to (about 7.5-by-9.5 inches); approx. pp. 119 (numbered by hand), with articles and images from numerous sources neatly mounted to the recto and verso. Boards scuffed; spine chipped and torn at tips, with gatherings exposed. Contains hundreds of articles on -- and portraits of -- authors, composers, heads of church and state, royalty, and more. This was, at some point, a ledger or journal, as patches of handwriting (numbers and letters) are sometimes visible between the articles or going to the very edge of the page. Our compiler focuses mostly on the arts, though his/her collection of articles does enjoy the occasional notice of the end of a family line ("The Last of the Carlyles") or item of broad social interest (the first female sailor in France). It features Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry Irving, H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, the King and Queen of Siam, the Bishop of Winchester, Lady Clifford, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and many more -- a spectrum of who's who, with an emphasis on the bookish. A bit stuffy, but also a bit curious -- perhaps the work of a student, an avid reader, or (maybe, just maybe) a social climber? Nice and full, almost no negative space.