Lot 3258: WILLIAMS, JOHN, 1796-1839, et al.

MANUSCRIPT FRIENDSHIP ALBUM INCLUDING EXTENSIVE ENTRY BY LEGENDARY SOUTH SEAS MISSIONARY JOHN WILLIAMS.
Album, approximately 60 pp of text plus blanks, 4to, bound in full gilt decorated red morocco, and containing Autograph Letters and Quotations by various literary and religious figures of 19th century England, with 4 watercolors and 10 pencil or ink drawings, Nottingham, England and other places, 1826-1853, very fine. Featuring an Autograph Letter Signed ("J. Williams / Missionary / South Seas"), 3 pp recto and verso, Nottingham, April 24, 1835, relaying a lengthy anecdote about a native of the island of Raiatea who was blinded by a stone during battle and converted to Christianity, and with a specimen of the native language.

John Williams was a missionary to the South Pacific who published a translation of the New Testament into the Raratongan language, as well as the popular memoir, A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands (1837). In this lengthy note, he describes the calm with which the blind native accepts death, and hopes that his own end will be as peaceful, ironically foreshadowing his untimely death a few years later when he was killed and eaten by cannibals.
This album was collected by Elizabeth Wilson, daughter of William Wilson, industrialist and four-time Mayor of Nottingham; it includes entries by Ann (Taylor) Gilbert (author of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" ); Mary Howitt (author); Charlotte Elizabeth (Phelan) (author and editor); George Thompson (abolitionist); and many others.
See illustration.