Description
Autograph Letter Signed, to “My dear Foss”, about a passage in Hamlet. With an integral printed leaf featuring an invitation to the next Dinner of The Cocked Hat Club, William J.Thoms, Hon. Sec. 1 page 8 x 5 inches, in good condition. Dated in another hand, 1852. Thoms, William John (1803-1885), antiquary. In 1849 Thoms established the periodical: Notes and Queries: a Medium of Inter-Communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc., priced at 3d. with a stamped edition for four pence. His iconoclastic treatise entitled Human Longevity, its Facts and its Fictions (1873) raised a storm of protest by its contention that the authentic cases in which human life had been prolonged to a hundred years and upwards were extremely rare. [ODNB]