SKEELES, R.H.R. (editor)

The Skeeles News Letter. For Friends in Australia and Elsewhere [sub-title from Number 2]. [Number 1], 18 May 1907 to Number 17, 24 July 1909

Los Angeles (Numbers 1-14), St Ives (Numbers 15 and 16) and South Yarra (Number 17), The Editor, 1907 to 1909.

Octavo, 17 newsletters bound in one volume, 4 pages each issue (the last one only 2 pages) plus [4] pages of plates (mainly portraits) between the eighth and ninth issues.

Flush-cut binder's cloth lettered in gilt; minor loss of text to the last page of the first issue (slight adhesion damage); occasional marginal emphases, with more extensive and pertinent annotations in ink to Numbers 15 and 16; in excellent condition.

Provenance: E.M. Christie, Melbourne (address label on an early blank); then presumably gifted ('with the compliments of' is written in pencil on the label) to Edward Edgar Pescott, with his initials (EEP 1944). An oddity, and a rarity, 'Published just when the whim takes'. The presence of family members in Melbourne at the time presumably accounts for these newsletters being in Australia in the first place. A manuscript note in Pescott's hand gives a few details about the man and his work, not least that he was a printer, and that this is a complete set of the letters. Later provenance: Edward Edgar Pescott (1872-1954), horticulturalist, naturalist, author and book-collector.