Autograph collecting was a popular hobby during the nineteenth century. Within the Graham family papers, there is a good example of this, an autograph album thought to have belonged to Sir Bellingham Graham 7th Baronet. The album contains seals, envelopes and entire letters, as well as the expected signatures. It has been arranged under groupings such as royalty, peers, bishops, statesmen and authors.  Notable signatures include those of Lord Byron and Thomas Jefferson. At first glance, the only female signature to be included belongs to Queen Victoria.

The album was in a sorry state, with the front and back boards and spine having become detached, therefore extensive conservation work has been started by our in-house conservator. The first phase has seen surface cleaning of the text block, which had become very dirty without a proper cover to protect it, and repairs to the items within, which had been torn in places.

The signatures, some of which have been cut from correspondence, plus other items, had been pasted in with animal glue. There were also many loose items at the back of the album, which had not been fixed in place. These have been housed in a separate folder as it would be inappropriate for us to place them in a particular section if they had not originated there.

The autograph album open to show, on the left, a letter from Sir Joshua Reynolds talking about the critiquing of art; on the right, Lord Byron declines an invitation from Lady Harrowby in 1812 [ZKZ]

Two of the project volunteers have listed and indexed the signatories, so that we can identify exactly who has been included. Some handwritten annotations provide useful dates etc, but further research is required to obtain full details for each signatory. The results of this work will, hopefully, prove invaluable for researchers, especially where a complete letter has been retained.

The second phase of conservation work involved re-sewing part of the text block to attach the marble end papers, protecting the wax seals with interleaving tissue and re-binding with tooled leather covers and housing in a custom-made archive box.