Search FNL grants since 1931

The National Library of Scotland has worked since the 1950s to build an unrivalled collection of modern Scottish Literary papers. This collection of almost 100 letters from Mackay Brown to Kenna Crawford, as well as 26 manuscript poems. The letters enrich the Library’s existing George Mackay Brown collection, which includes significant literary papers and much of his extensive correspondence with a wide circle of friends, some famous and some unknown.

In 1903 Anna Muthesius published the influential Das Eigenkleid der Frau, regarded as a seminal text in the development of early twentieth-century dress, and particularly associated with the Artistic Dress movement. Artistic Dress describes clothing that was produced for everyday use, designed in accordance with contemporary art principles, intended to challenge fashion and considered a work of art in itself.

One of the very first decisions made by the Mitchell Library trustees in 1874 was that the Library should seek to acquire all that it could about Glasgow, and about Robert Burns. The Robert Burns Collection is, therefore, fundamental to the Mitchell Library, and remains at the core of our current collecting policy. The acquisition of Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon adds considerable strength to the Mitchell Library’s existing holdings.

This first edition of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne is very finely bound by Robert Riviere with a fore-edge painting of The Plestor, the village square in Selborne, reproduced from one of the original illustrations for the first edition of The Natural History. The original illustrations were commissioned by Gilbert White himself from the Swiss painter Samuel Hieronymus Grimm. Fore-edge paintings are very rare and this edition will make a very valuable exhibition item. Robert Riviere was an English bookbinder of French descent, he was an accomplished craftsman and his styles and techniques have not often been surpassed.

In the 18th century genteel behaviour was a crucial concern of London’s middling sorts, whose homes and domestic lives the Geffrye Museum represents. Nivelon wrote to advise those 'who had rather be, and appear, easy, amiable, genteel and free in their person, mein, Air and motions, than stiff, awkward, deform’d, and, consequently, disagreeable’.

This copy of the The Compleat Gardener’s Practice, a 17th-century gardening book, was acquired from the library of the garden designer Rosemary Verey, and includes the yellow sticker she used to mark the knot design which inspired her own renowned garden at her home, Barnsley House. Stephen Blake’s The Compleat Gardener’s Practice is an important addition for the Garden Museum collection, because it illustrates the change in use and design of the garden during the seventeenth century. It is also invaluable to the study of twentieth- century garden design.

A splendid map of the environs of Newhaven, drawn by William Figg in 1824 measuring over 6 by 8 feet. The Figgs were the foremost Lewes surveyors of the day, and the office holds many of their maps and drawings, both worked-up products from the records of their clients, and the substantive business archive of the firm itself. This map, drawn at a scale of 100 feet to an inch, is a detailed survey of an extensive area from the mouth of the river Ouse upstream to the town.

A copy of Astesanus de Ast, Summa de Casibus Conscientiae, in a contemporary named binding by Johannes Meigfoge, active in Ellwangen or Tübingen (Baden-Württemberg) in 1475-1513. The binding contains two large ninth-century manuscript fragments as pastedowns, taken from a manuscript of Bede's In librum Genesim, making it one of the oldest witnesses to In Genesim. This book is a significant one and the acquisition of the manuscript fragments of In Genesim represents an important addition to Durham Cathedral Library.

The Fox family of Falmouth are unparalleled within Cornwall for the breadth of their commercial activities and personal interests. This collection documents the full range of the family’s activities and incorporates the surviving archives of their principal business, G. C. Fox and Company, from its foundation in 1762 to its eventual sale in 1999. Over time this firm held interests in shipping, mining, engineering, fishing, signals and travel agency. Its partners acted in a consular capacity for countries throughout the Europe and the Americas.

An early post-incunable in a remarkable early sixteenth-century binding by a named binder. This 1515 edition of the anonymous Vocabularius utriusque iuris reprints one of the most popular legal dictionaries of the early modern period. Many of the 16th-century editions are now very rare; this edition is known in just three other copies.