[Drop head title:] Bank Meeting. February 6, 1798. In the Press and speedily will be Published, with Notes and Illustrations, The Interesting and patriotic Speech, made by Mr. E. Kemble, Relative to the Support of the State, In the Present Alarming Crisis, with the Particulars of the Emigrant French School Master, with whom Master K. is under Tuition [...]

Bookseller Notes

An unrecorded broadside announcing the publication of two works by Edward Kemble, partner in the tea brokerage of Venn and Kemble and Bank of England shareholder.Among Pitt's schemes to raise money for the war with France was the 'Voluntary Contribution'. Corporations were expected to participate, and shareholders of the Bank of England met on 23rd June 1798 and decided on a donation of two hundred thousand pounds. Kemble was an enthusiastic supporter of this plan, and his speeches in favour are advertised here, though they themselves appear not to have survived. Eighteenth-century wars proved lucrative for bankers as well as offering opportunities for displays of patriotism.32 card leaves with pressed fern specimens mounted mainly on rectos only, printed caption-slips, front joint splitting, occasional spotting, offsetting and discolouration, minor loss to a few specimensEric Craig, a Scottish-born Auckland resident who had previously worked as a builder and carpenter, began producing albums of fern specimens for sale during the 1870s. The first scientific account on New Zealand ferns, Hooker's Flora Novae-Zelandiae, had appeared only a few years earlier, in 1855. See further Goulding, 'Early Publications and Exhibits of New Zealand Ferns and the Work of Eric Craig', Records of the Auckland Institute and Museum, Vol. 14 (10th December 1977), pp. 63-79).