Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, as Secretary of State for the Colonies : autograph note, signed. “Knebworth”, Stevenage, 23 September 1858.

Manuscript in ink, 1 page, quarto (230 x 180 mm); the note is addressed simply ‘Dear Sir’, and is signed ‘Yours truly, E. B. Lytton’, with Lytton’s private address and date below: ‘”Knebworth”, Stevenage, Sep. 23 [1858]’; the unidentified addressee is requested to visit Lytton at the Colonial Office on the following day at ‘1/4 before 3 o’c’, if he should be in town; well preserved and laid down on a nineteenth-century album page (verso blank), inscribed in ink in the lower margin by the album’s compiler: ‘E. B. Lytton’, and with Lytton’s embossed crest (removed from the original envelope) mounted in the upper margin.

Whig politician Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, served as Secretary of State for the Colonies between June 1858 and June 1859. During his term he appointed Richard Clement Moody as Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia.

Provenance: Autograph album compiled by Jane Emma Murphy (Balcombe) (1854-1924), “The Briars,” Mornington, Victoria (Australia); à Beckett family, Melbourne (by descent).