Monogram album compiled in the late 1860s by a young Englishwoman, Jessie J. Milling.

Small quarto (200 x 160 mm), original gilt-ruled red morocco, upper board stamped in gilt ‘Arms, Crests and Monograms’ (expertly rebacked, boards a little scuffed); moire endpapers, the front free-endpaper with ownership signature and date of ‘Jessie. J. Milling, July 9th 1867’, with off-setting from the front pastedown which has a tipped-in pencil portrait of a young woman – presumably Jessie; lithographed title-leaf with calligraphic title ‘The Monogram Album’, [25] card leaves with 7 chromolithographic crests and monograms mounted on each (a couple missing), in total 170+ monograms, with an additional 20 ‘extras’ glued down by Jessie on the verso of the front endpaper and first blank; clean and attractive throughout, with all the tissue guards intact (occasional light foxing to those).

A lovely example of a mid-nineteenth century commercially produced monogram album, designed to house a private collection of crests and monograms that would have been souvenired from envelopes and other stationery.

There can be little doubt that Jessie J. Milling was a young English (or Scottish?) woman. Aside from the coats of arms of various nations, her collection includes the crests of the National Exhibition of Works of Art, Leeds; the City of Leeds; University of Aberdeen; Pembroke College, Cambridge; Downing College, Cambridge; Wray family of Durham; Fallings House (Wolverhampton); Royal Grammar School, Guildford, Surrey; Russell family (with motto Che sera sera); the Duke of Montrose; and Earl Dalhousie.