Catalogue of the Pictures at Sherborne Castle.
Printed by Emily Faithfull
One of Her First Productions
[Faithfull, Emily]. Portman, Louisa Mary. Catalogue of the Pictures at Sherborne Castle. London: Printed by Emily Faithfull & Co., Victoria Press (for the Employment of Women), 1862.
8vo.; maroon endpapers; edges stained red; red and black cloth; decoratively stamped in blind and gilt; spine sunned; edgeworn. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of one of Faithfull’s first productions, an inventory of the castle’s artwork, as well as biographical and topical information about sitters in the numerous portraits therein; with three engraved room plans, and one folding genealogical table, and three appendices at the rear. The “Index to the Pictures,” lists fifty-seven family portraits, and identifies the sitter and location of the portrait within Sherborne.
Faithfull ran an all-female printing press, and this book was issued in a small number for private distribution by G.D. Wingfield Digby, the occupant of the Sherborne Castle. The castle had been built by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1594; since 1617, it was the seat of the Digby family in Dorset. Many of the paintings it housed date to the sixteenth century, but it also displayed Old Master paintings that Morton Pitt gave to the second Earl Digby in the 1820s, in order to discharge a debt.
Compiled by Portman, the niece Digby, to whom she dedicated the work. A family presentation, inscribed on the verso of the front endpaper: G.D. Digby for his beloved friend [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]. The name is written illegibly.
Entries begin with the sitter’s name in a Gothic script, “Louisa, Duchess of Portsmouth,” for example, and continue with a description: “Full-length, standing in red velvet robes, with jewels, and brocaded satin and gold petticoat, her right hand resting on a coronet. This picture came from the collection of Morton Pitt, Esq., and has in the corner the name of ‘Kneller, 1687’” (p. 53).
At her death, Portman was buried at Bryanston in 1870, when she was thirty-six years old. Traditional references turn up no further biographical detail, however some association is presumed with the book’s illustrious printer, Emily Faithfull.
Arguably more compelling than the contents of the book is its publisher. Emily Faithfull (1935-1895) was a publisher and women’s rights activist; little is known about her early life, but she was presented at court in 1857. That same year, she became part of the newly formed Langham Place Circle, a group of women who met regularly to improve upon women’s situation. In addition to Faitfull, the Circle included well-known middle-class British feminists like Barbara Bodichon, Maria Rye, Jessie Boucherett and Bessie Rayner Parkes; they published a periodical called the English Women’s Journal (this was later retitled the Englishwoman’s Review) and instigated reforms, like working-class education and women’s employment.
In 1859, the group founded The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women. W.F. Frederman explains that the impetus behind the birth of this Society was to explore and approve various trade-related employments for women.
Bessie Parkes bought a small printing press, and she and Emily Faithfull employed a compositor, Austin Holyoake…to give instruction in composing. On the basis of this experience they concluded that composing could be a suitable occupation for women. To this end, on 25 March, 1860, Emily Faithfull opened the Victoria Press at Great Coram Street, London. She invested her own capital in the press and had the financial backing of another committee member of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women, G.W. Hastings. (“Faithfull, Emily (1835–1895),” but Felicity Hunt, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, Oxford: OUP, 2004)
When Queen Victoria became aware of the press and the works the women published there, she gave a royal warrant to the opera
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