Description
Autograph Letter Signed, to ‘My dear Layard’ (Sir Austen Henry Layard, excavator of Nineveh), making the arrangements for a committee meeting and a lecture. 2 pp. 7 x 4½ inches, in good condition. Sydenham, 10 April 1854. Samuel Phillips (1814–1854), journalist and novelist, author of Caleb Stukely (1844). About 1845 he obtained an appointment on the staff of The Times as a writer of literary reviews, and this post he filled for the rest of his life. He was literary director at the Crystal Palace, and wrote a Guide to the Crystal Palace and Park and Portrait Gallery of the Crystal Palace (1854). In August 1853 he suggested the formation of a society for promoting Assyrian archaeological exploration, and in a short time a staff of skilled operators was dispatched to Nineveh.