FAMOUS Victorian author, showman, mountaineer and journalist Albert Smith has fallen from public attention over the past 150 years.

On any given evening in the 1850s, excited crowds would have queued to get into the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, where Albert Smith’s show ‘Mont Blanc’ was being performed.

By the middle of the decade he had started ‘Mont Blanc Mania’ for all things Alpine and mountaineering.

Lawrences Auctioneers of Crewkerne is holding an auction of an extensive, previously unrecorded archive of items relating to Albert Smith.

Original manuscripts, books, letters, items produced to accompany his shows and all nature of items will be sold in 50 lots on Thursday, March 16.

The collection will sell for many thousands of pounds and is likely to be of interest to buyers in this country and the USA.

Doctor's son Albert studied medicine, published novels and plays, toured Constantinople and the Near East, scaled Mont Blanc and put on his show in the Egyptian Hall, which ran to 2,000 performances over six years, sparking a surge of interest in mountaineering.

He later visited China and gave another popular entertainment at the same venue entitled ‘Mont Blanc to China’.

Numerous examples of Albert's literary work are included in the archive, such as his short lived comic journal ‘The Man in the Moon’, which ran to 30 editions and was intended to be a rival for Punch.

The Mont Blanc items are sure to raise the greatest interest. A magnificent punch bowl presented to Albert by his brother Arthur after the 500th performance and a jug presented after the 200th show.

Consigned for auction directly from the family of Albert Smith’s sister Laura Eady, the collection brings together the finest collection of work relating to Albert Smith seen in public for many years.