I have two volumes of the sixth edition of the Works of the Right Honourable Lady, Mary Wortley Montague Including her Correspondence, Poems and Essays, published, by permission, from her Genuine Papers. This was published in London by Richard Phillipsof Bridge Street in 1811. It’s a nice little set. I have no memory of when, why or how I picked these up.
Volume two has a pasted in ownership label for Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Hislop.
Both volumes have a bookplate, best described as ‘Out of a [rock or cloud?], an arm embowed, grasping an arrow’. With the initials A.L.E.
Sir Thomas Hislop is very easy to identify. He lived from 5 July 1764 to 3 May 1843. He was made a lieutenant general in 1812 and knighted in 1814. So this label postdates 1814, and before he died in 1843.
A.L.E. is trickier, but we know that in 1822 Sir Thomas married Emma Elliot of Madras, daughter of Hugh Elliot, so this is probably one of her relations. Hugh’s father was the first Earl of Minto. Thomas and Emma’s daughter Emma Eleanor Elizabeth Hislop married William Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 3rd Earl of Minto (grandson to the 1st Earl) in 1844. So there’s a slightly overwhelming number of Eliotts surrounding this book, although very few seem to have ‘A’ as a first initial.
Fairbairn’s book of crests notes several Elliots, with ‘Elliot, or Elliott, issuing from a cloud, a dexter hand throwing a dart’ or ‘a dexter arm, in hand a dart, point downward’.[1] Our A.L.E.’s crest seems to be along these lines, and isn’t too far removed from the Earl of Minto’s crest – although the thing the arm seems to be emerging from looks more like an island than a cloud to me.
[1] James Fairbairn, Fairbairn’s Crests of the Families of Great Britain and Ireland, revised y Laurence Butters (New Orchard, 1986)