Calcutta Old and New: A Historical and Descriptive Handbook to the City.

Calcutta: W. Newman & Co., 1907. First edition. Signed by the author. Thick octavo. xiv, 1011, [1, blank], xxx [index]. Publisher's striated blue cloth with gilt spine and cover lettering. First two leaves a bit browned but remainder are very bright, title page pulling away but still firmly attached. A very good copy in the publisher's binding.From the library Ambassador and Mrs. Alexander Weddell of Virginia House, Richmond, Virginia, with their bookplate and signature; "A & V Weddell, Calcutta, 1923". Below this is the signature of the author, dated 1924, rhere is also a tipped in letter from Cotton to the Weddells dated 1924. It is written on Government House, Calcutta, stationery. From the library Ambassador and Mrs. Alexander Weddell of Virginia House, Richmond, Virginia. Alexander Weddell graduated from George Washington University with a law degree but he found his real calling in diplomacy. In 1907 he secured appointment as secretary to the newly appointed minister to Denmark, and in the diplomatic world he found his profession. His first assignment upon completing the Foreign Service exam in 1909 was Zanzibar. Stints in Catania, Sicily, Athens, Beirut, Cairo, and Calcutta followed as Weddell forged his diplomatic career. He met his future wife in Calcutta where he was Consul General from 1920 to 1925.. In 1928, deeply concerned about his wife's health, yearning to return to Virginia, and disappointed in his assignment to Montreal by the Republican administration, Weddell, a southern Democrat, resigned from the diplomatic corps. Weddell's retirement came to an end, however, in 1933 when he finally achieved his dream of becoming an ambassador, being assigned by Franklin D. Roosevelt to the mission to Argentina. He and Virginia spent five years there and and in 1938 he retired to Virgina House and lived there until his death in a train wreck in 1948,.