Album compiled by Mrs Maud Ranken, nee Woodhouse, of letters written principally to Lady Eastlake and members of her family. Arranged alphabetically by writer, with typescript copies and biographical material interfiled. Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, 1810-1893, author and artist, was a daughter of Dr Edward Rigby and a sister of Eleanor Nightingale. She married artist, Charles, later Sir Charles Eastlake. Mss. signed (some typewritten transcripts)

This year marks the bicentennial of the English writer, translator, critic and amateur artist Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake (1809–93). The Letters of Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake brings together a comprehensive collection of her surviving correspondence and reveals significant new material about this extraordinary Victorian figure. Rigby wrote on a variety of subjects, most notably reviews of works and authors such as Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair, Ruskin, Coleridge, and Madame de Staël, as well as art-related criticism, including one of the earliest critical texts on photography. Her lively correspondence here shows how this well-connected woman played such an important role in the Victorian art world.