Passages from the Autobiography of a Man of Kent, together with a Few Rough Pen-and-Ink Sketches, by the Same Hand, of Some of the People He Has Met, The Changes He Has Seen, and the Places He Has Visited, 1817-1865 (Signed & Inscribed Presentation Copy)

First edition, first impression. Signed and inscribed by the author, Robert Cowton, to Member of Parliament Thomas Hughes, dated 1867. xvi, 406pp, with occasional page decorations.  Green buckram-covered boards with gilt decorations and gilt lettering on the spine. Brown endpapers.  8vo.  Boards are heavily worn, rubbed and indented at edges, rounded and bumped on corners and frayed at ends of a dull and dry spine, with a couple of small chips and scratches in cloth.  Front hinge split open, loosening the front board,  Front free endpaper detached, chipped around edges and toned to brittle (the reverse of the front free endpaper has the inscription).  Some spotting on first and last few pages and occasional smudge and fingering marks.  Slightly cocked, binding brittle.  

Passages from the Auto-biography of a Man of Kent is the 1865 memoir of Robert Cowtan, born in Canterbury in 1817.  Cowtan was an author, printer, bookseller and public servant who spent most of his career in London working as a cataloguer and library assistant in the British Museum (Reading Room).  The book traces Cowtan’s life from early schooling in Canterbury – where he struggled with a severe stammer.  His professional life in London’s printing and library sectors brought him into contact with prominent and eccentric personalities and the book contains many pen portraits of cultural and public figures as well as documenting the technological changes he witnesses during his career.  The volume was published anonymously – even the credited editor was an alias of his good friend John Collyer Knight – but his authorship was largely an open secret among literary circles and co-workers at the British Museum and bibliographers have subsequently credited Cowtan with the work.

Thomas Hughes MP, to whom this volume is inscribed by the author, was the Liberal Member of Parliament for Lambeth from 1865; but he is perhaps better remembered at the author of the masterpiece of Victorian literature, Tom Brown’s School Days (1857).