Call Number:

C0804

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 4 boxes
• 1.4 linear feet

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); George Augustus Sala Correspondence, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1857-1890 (inclusive) and 1857-1894 (bulk)

Creator:

Sala, George Augustus (1828-1895)

Form:

Correspondence -- 19th century

Abstract:

George Augustus Sala was a nineteenth-century English journalist, artist, book illustrator, traveler, humorist, and novelist. The collection contains approximately 300 letters written to Sala by about 200 different people over the course of 40 years. Among the correspondents are prominent authors, journalists, artists, nobility, philanthropists, and other notables.

George Augustus Sala was an English journalist, artist, book illustrator, traveler, humorist, and novelist. He was editor of Chat, founded and edited (1860-1866) the Temple Bar magazine, and was special correspondent in 1856 to Russia for Charles Dickens and for the Telegraph during the civil war in America. Sala was also a contributor to Household Words and many other publications, and the author of books of travel and novels, such as A Journey Due North (1858) and Things I Have Seen And People I Have Known (1894).

The collection contains approximately 300 letters written to Sala by about 200 different people over the course of 40 years. Included in the collection are letters, usually single, by prominent authors, journalists, artists, nobility, philanthropists, and other notables, such as Sir Edwin Arnold, P. T. Barnum, Dion Boucicault, M. E. Braddon, Wilkie Collins, Lady Mary Combermere, George Cruikshank, Charles Dickens, Jean Henri Dunant, Emily Faithful, Lord Ronald Gower, W. Holman Hunt, Sir Henry Irving, Charles G. Leland, Horace Mayhew, Arthur Orton (the Tichborne claimant), Charles Reade, Henry Vizetelly, Thomas Woolner, and Edmund Yates.

Additional accessions include letters written by Sala to various correspondents, including Richard Edgecumbe, William Powell Frith, Sir Charles Hall, Joseph Jefferson, Parke Godwin, Lady Monckton, and John Busrand Payne. Also included is a letter from Ralph Straus, who seems to have been the original owner of the 300 letters, to de. V. Payne Payne regarding Sala, dated Sept. 6, 1939.

Letters sent to Sala have been removed from one large scrapbook, maintaining their original (random) order, and placed in folders with numbers corresponding to the former scrapbook pages. Arranged as follows: Box 1, folders 1-90; Box 2, folders 91-200; Box 3, folders 201-347; Box 4, Xerox copies of the letters, and letters sent by George Sala.