[ John Gibson Lockhart, Scottish author. ] Autograph Letter Signed ('J G Lockhart'), with red wax seal, to the travel writer Mrs Henry Stistetd [ Clotilda Elizabeth Stisted ], commending her book ('Letters from the Bye-ways of Italy').

2pp., 12mo. Bifolium. In good condition, on lightly-aged paper. Addressed (with seal in red wax, and two postmarks) on reverse of second leaf: 'through France | Italie | Mrs Stisted | Villa Brodrick | Bagni di Lucca'. He thanks her for sending 'a very agreeable book', which he wishes had reached him ' a year ago when the Quarterly Review was taking Lady Travellers in hand'. If 'another batch of them' should be 'ready by & bye' her book 'will run no risk of being forgotten'. He congratulates her on 'a pleasant & apparently a very profitable residence in Italy', and wishes he had heard of her being there when he visited the country 'two summers' before. He ends the letter with news of his 'son of 19' and 'daughter of nearly 18', whom he hopes to shew to her one day. A footnote to the Browning Correspondence states that Mrs Stisted was the 'daughter of Bladen Swinney, of Dublin, and his wife Catherine (née Stoney), had met EBB many years before (see letter 2647, note 3). In 1820 at Dublin, she married Captain (later Colonel) Henry Stisted (d. 1859, aged 72), of the 1st Royal Dragoons. Mrs. Stisted was generally, albeit humorously, acknowledged as the “Queen” of Bagni di Lucca society (see Thomas Adolphus Trollope, What I Remember, 1887, II, 137).'