Joseph Angus Autograph Collection Acc. no. h.32-33

At the Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford, are two bound volumes of MS. letters collected by Joseph Angus and by his son, Charles Joseph Angus, acc. no. 24.h.32-33.

The two volumes are titled "Autographs"; both are signed "C. J. Angus. 1862."  Some of the autographs are signatures only; others are notes and letters addressed to Joseph Angus or members of his family, such as W. B. Gurney. 

Autographs, Book 1 (signed “C. J. Angus. 1862.”). Acc.  no. 24.h.32 contain 96 autographs, most of which are identified and labelled by C. J. Angus, son of Joseph Angus. Many are notes addressed to Joseph Angus or members of his family, such as W. B. Gurney (Angus's father-in-law). Not all are identified, and some are signatures only.

This volumes contains autographs of a number of English nobility, such as Queen Victoria (signature dated 27 February 1861), Henry Temple (Viscount Palmerston), Lady Fox, the Earl of Shaftesbury, and Sir H. Havelock; political figures such as William Wilberforce (lettter to W. B. Gurney, dated 15 November 1825), Henry Brougham, W. E. Gladstone,  Sir George Lewis (War Secretary), Earl of Clarendon (Minister of Foreign Affairs), and S. M. Peto (M.P.); literary figures such as Charles Dickens (signature dated 20 May 1859), David Masson (English professor at the University of London), Walter Scott, Lydia H. Sigourney (a note to Amelia Angus, undated), the poet Gerald Massey (a note to Joseph Angus), the dramatist James Sheridan Knowles (a note to Angus, undated), and the author Mrs. A. Charles; religious figures such as Dr. Tait (the Bishop of London) and the signature of the Rev. G. F. W. Mortimer (Headmaster of the City of London School); and other figures of note, such as H. L. Mansel of Oxford (a note to Angus dated 15 June 1860), the educator Horace Mann (a note to Angus from 1859), and W. A. Knight of Trinity College, Cambridge (a note to Angus dated 27 March 1869). 

Autographs:  Book II [signed “C. J. Angus.  1862.” contains 101 autographs of ministers and religious writers, primarily Baptists, but also some Congregationalists, Methodists, and Moravians, written mostly to Joseph Angus or W. B. Gurney.

Included in this volume are letters of Robert Hall to W. B. Gurney, 27 May 1813; Joseph Hughes to W. B. Gurney, 25 April 1831; W. B. Gurney to Joseph Angus, 15 July 1841; William Yates, BMS missionary in Calcutta, to W. B. Gurney, 25 December 1832; Olinthus Gregory (Robert Hall’s biographer and editor) to W. B. Gurney, 26 March 1832; as well as letters to Angus by C. H. Spurgeon (pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle), John Liefchild (Independent minister in Bristol), and John Sheppard (Baptist writer from Frome), and Alexander Grosart of Edinburgh.