Search FNL grants since 1931

Rudyard Kipling and his family made several visits to South Africa between 1898 and 1908 for winter holidays and, whilst there, he was introduced to Edmund Garrett. It is likely that shared opinions and inquisitive minds brought Kipling and Garrett together. Both were deeply interested in the political situation in the region and, as documented in one of the letters, maintained a vision of a ‘Federated States of South Africa’ which would sit within the British Empire but have autonomy over governing its affairs. Thus, Kipling’s writing offers an insight into his opinions at a pivotal time for South Africa’s relationship with the United Kingdom as the former moved towards independence, something which was nominally granted by the South Africa Act of 1909.

The most complete of its kind, this survey depicts the tracks of HMS Investigator, under the command of Robert McClure, between 1850 and 1851 during its search for John Franklin’s ill-fated expedition to the Arctic. HMS Investigator had originally set out with HMS Enterprise under Captain Collinson, but they became separated off the coast of Chile. McClure, who had already visited the Arctic with George Back in 1836-7 and Sir James Clark Ross in 1848-9, continued north and the ships did not meet again on their expedition.

A rare autograph letter from the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel to his son Isambard who was then studying at the University of Oxford. It was written soon after the launch of the SS Great Eastern steamship. The 10-page letter was sent on 2nd February 1858 after a fraught and stressful period in the engineer’s life: difficulties encountered during the construction of the huge ship had been made worse when the vessel resolutely refused to budge from the shipyard on the side of the Thames at Millwall during its first attempted launch on 3rd November 1857.

The records of York Street Chapel and the Robert Browning Settlement, a religious and later charitable institution that was based in Walworth, South London for nearly 200 years. The chapel, founded in 1790, was home as a congregational church to many including, famously, the poet Robert Browning and his family. The records purchased include deeds relating to its founding, minutes (1790-1927), lists of its members (1790-1977), Sunday school (1840-1969), burials (1781-1837) and baptisms (1804-1997), including the baptism in 1812 of Robert Browning. Following the chapel’s reinvention as a mission, the new Robert Browning Settlement was launched in 1894, led by F. Herbert Stead. The Settlement developed a programme of outreach and support for the local community in Walworth.

Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences. He accompanied Captain James Cook on his first voyage of discovery around the world, he also visited Newfoundland, Iceland, and Holland. He was responsible for the establishment of Kew Gardens and the development of its early collections. The Whaplode and Surfleet Allotment books are a valuable addition to our knowledge of Sir Joseph Banks’s land holdings in the South of Lincolnshire.

A group of watercolours from the collection of the English botanist, William Curtis (1746-1799).  Thirteen were bought with a full grant from FNL, 13 having previously been bought at the Catherine Southon Auctioneers’ auction. The provenance of the illustrations made possible by the FNL’s grant, can be traced back to Curtis’s own collection, which makes them an unusual and exciting acquisition. Containing material attributed to Sydenham Edwards and other, currently unidentified, artists, they are very much in the stylistic paradigm adopted by The Magazine. 

As the catalogue puts it, the exhibition featured ‘500 Oil Sketches of India and the Archipelago, painted on the spot by Marianne North’. The sense that these pictures were painted ‘on the spot’, their freshness and immediacy, was seen as their greatest strength. The Pall Mall Gazette review of the exhibition, lukewarm in its assessment of their artistic merit, still found that her paintings depicted ‘more vividly than any such collection yet exhibited all that a traveller can see’ of India, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Borneo, and Java.

Jonathan Ridsdale, Acquisitions Librarian, writes: This large folio contains 40 heliogravures, including 10 enhanced with watercolour, and 20 pages of specific information on the building projects; it is copy number six of only 110 produced.

Pusey House Library and Archive is an independent institution founded in 1884 to keep alive the theological legacy of the Anglo-Catholic figurehead Dr Edward Bouverie-Pusey (1800-1882). These six letters – not are they fairly lengthy, and they demonstrate Pusey’s thoughts on a range of moral and economic matters.

Edward Thomas was a literary critic, writer and, ultimately, poet who was killed in the First World War at the beginning, literally, of the Battle of Arras on Easter Monday, 9 April, 1917. Amongst his most well-known books are The Icknield Way (1913) and In Pursuit of Spring (1914), and his poetry includes the often-requested Adlestrop (1915) and As the team’s head-brass (1916). Thomas was also a lover of nature and inspired by many of those writing about (and living in) the country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – including W H Davies, W H Hudson and Richard Jefferies – about whom Thomas’s biography is one of the best.