Abstract
An autograph or friendship album given in 1843 by Victorian actor and playwright James Sheridan Knowles to Jemma Haigh, daughter of a Yorkshire wool merchant, offers a glimpse of social networks and cultural practices of early Victorian England. Knowles's inscription evokes his contemporaries' characterisation of his work as ‘domestic’. The album also provides intriguing but fragmentary biographical evidence about the period's most respected playwright. In addition, the album shows some of the threads woven to create Victorian middle-class culture.
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