£1,550.00
Chick, N. A. (compiler). In Memoriam: A Complete Record in a Permanent Form of All the Mournful Circumstances, Public Ceremonies, and General Expression of Sorrow and Sympathy in Connection with the Assassination of the Late Earl of Mayo, K.P., G.M.S.I., Viceroy and Governor-General of India. Calcutta: Printed at the City Press by Thomas S. Smith, 1872. First edition.
A particularly handsome contemporary copy of this substantial memorial volume commemorating Richard Southwell Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, Viceroy and Governor-General of India, following his assassination in February 1872.
The volume is strikingly bound in full dark green morocco, the covers richly decorated in gilt with Greek-key borders and ornamental cornerpieces, the upper board lettered “In Memoriam / Lord Mayo / G.G.I.” in gilt. The spine is divided into raised compartments with extensive gilt decoration. Decorative gilt turn-ins and marbled endpapers complete the binding.
The work opens with a mounted photographic portrait of Lord Mayo in official dress, surrounded by an elaborate printed laurel memorial device bearing the Mayo arms and motto “A Cruce Salus.”
Of particular interest is the contemporary manuscript presentation inscription on the preliminary leaf, dated 1872 and apparently presented by an individual whose initials appear to read A. M. M. The precise recipient and inscription merit further research and add a potentially important provenance element to the volume.
Year: 1872
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: City Press, Thomas S. Smith, 12 Bentinck Street, Calcutta
On 8 February 1872, the British administration of India was shaken by an extraordinary event: the serving Viceroy of India was assassinated.
Richard Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, had travelled to the penal settlement at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands as part of an official inspection. As he returned towards his boat that evening, he was attacked and fatally stabbed by Sher Ali Afridi, a convict serving a life sentence.
Mayo’s death was unprecedented. He remains the only British Viceroy of India to have been assassinated while in office.
Published in Calcutta in the same year, this volume was created specifically to preserve the immediate response to the assassination. As its title declares, it sought to provide a “complete record in a permanent form” of the circumstances surrounding Mayo’s death, the subsequent public ceremonies, and the widespread expressions of mourning and sympathy.
The elaborate binding is particularly appropriate to the work’s commemorative purpose. Rather than merely being a nineteenth-century biography, this is an object created in the immediate aftermath of a major political assassination — part biography, part documentary record and part Victorian memorial.
The mounted photographic portrait further strengthens that immediacy. Photography was still a comparatively young medium in book production, and its inclusion gives the volume the character of a personal and institutional memorial rather than an ordinary printed history.
This is an unusually evocative piece of British Indian and imperial history, produced in Calcutta during the year of the event it commemorates.
Its appeal lies in the combination of several elements: an important historical subject, contemporary Indian printing, an original photographic portrait, an exceptionally decorative memorial binding and contemporary manuscript provenance.
For collectors of the British Raj, colonial India, Victorian political history, nineteenth-century photography, fine bindings or assassination-related material, it represents the kind of book in which the physical object is almost as compelling as the text.
The gilt morocco binding and photographic memorial portrait also make this a particularly impressive display volume.
First edition, Calcutta, 1872. A handsome contemporary memorial volume recording the assassination and national mourning of Richard Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, Viceroy and Governor-General of India. Illustrated with a mounted photographic portrait and preserved in an elaborate full green morocco gilt memorial binding, with contemporary presentation inscription dated 1872.
