On offer is a collection of ephemeral items connected to Dr. Leone Levi's (1821-1888) 1867 trip to Italy. The featured piece of this collection is the signature of King of Sardinia and Italy, Victor Emmanuel II (Vittorio Emanuele Maria Alberto Eugenio Ferdinando Tommaso) (1820-1878). The first piece in this collection is the signature of Victor Emmanuel II clipped from a document. Undated c.1867. This collection also includes five other pieces involving Dr. Leone Levi visit to Italy in 1867. These are: a letter from the Minister of Agriculture dated 2nd Oct. 1867; a program of the musical 'Della guardia Nazionale al Pranzo di S. M. i1 Re nel R. Palazzo Pitti' and a single page menu both with the date Oct. 5 1867; with a printed. invitation to the 'II Preffo del Palazzo d' Ordine di Sua Maesta. With an Italian sonnet written in Leone Levi's hand. BIO NOTES: Victor Emanuel II (Vittorio Emanuele Maria Alberto Eugenio Ferdinando Tommaso) (1820-1878) King of Sardinia from 1849 until, on 17 March 1861, he assumed the title King of Italy to become the first king of United Italy since the 6th century, a title he held until his death in 1878. The Italians gave him the epithet Father of the Homeland (Padre de/la Patria). Dr. Leone Levi was professor of Commercial Law in King's College, London. Leone Levi was an English jurist and statistician. Born to a Jewish family in Ancona, Italy, he worked in commerce there before emigrating to Liverpool in 1844. There he obtained British citizenship and joined the Presbyterian church. At the time, English law regarding the establishment of local chambers of commerce was highly unsystematic and wanting. He therefore advocated their institution in numerous pamphlets, leading to the establishment of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce in 1849, with Levi as its secretary. In 1850 he published his Commercial Law of the World, an exhaustive comparative treatise upon the laws and codes of mercantile countries. Appointed in 1852 to the chair of commercial law at King's College London, he was a popular instructor who innovated evening classes. Levi was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1859, and a doctorate in political science from the University of Tübingen. His chief work, History of British Commerce and of the Economic Progress of the British Nation, 1763-1870, is considered to be a partisan account of British economic development, but its value as a work of reference cannot be gainsaid. His other works include: Work and Pay; Wages and Earnings of the Working Classes; and International Law, with Materials for a Code. quoted from Wikipedia
