Inscribed by the author to "Joseph Guedalla, in remembrance of a great service. With sincere regards, Frances Hodgson Burnett, August /88" on the initial blank of the first volume, and similarly inscribed in the remaining volumes. In 1887 Burnett travelled back to England for Queen Victoria's jubilee, spending the winter in Florence and then returning to Manchester (her hometown) and then London, where she adapted her novel The Fortunes of Philippa Fairfax for the West End. Joseph Guedalla was a solicitor and radical politician from a prominent family of Sephardi Jews. His obituary in the Star (issue 4976, 14 June 1894) recalled him as "next to Sir George Lewis, the most influential solicitor in London". He was on the executive council of the Reform League, in which capacity he was involved in a public dispute with Robert Lowe, Gladstone's Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1868 to 1873, regarding the Liberal politician's hostile attitude to the trades unions, and was also honorary secretary of the English Department of the International League of Peace and Liberty. In 1870 he founded the Amphytrion Club at 41 Albemarle Street, Mayfair, employing the noted French chef Emile Aoust. The club was "celebrated for the excellence of its cuisine, and the high scale of its charges", and it is possibly this service that Burnett so enjoyed as she took in the London season (Mitton, Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater, online).
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