Search FNL grants since 1931

The Harrison & Seel archive consists of photographs, drawings, sketchbooks and miscellaneous items (press cuttings, magazines, copies of the official guide and other paper documents, as well as four mid-18th century hand-coloured engravings of Vauxhall & Ranelagh Gardens that the architects used as a source of inspiration). This extensive archive represents a very fine addition to the RIBA Collections, as it documents a very important moment in Britain’s cultural and architectural history, recording a lesser-known aspect of the Festival of Britain that has left even fewer physical traces than the South Bank Exhibition at Waterloo.

An early twentieth-century edition of ‘The Romaunt of the Rose’ by Geoffrey Chaucer. This publication was the first book printed by the Florence Press, an imprint of Chatto and Windus, intended to compete with private presses by producing books of similar style and beauty. The press commissioned a special type and often hired well-known artists to add lavish illustrations in a Pre-Raphaelite style. The University of Reading is well-known for its established and growing expertise in book and printing history, and this volume complements the University’s significant holdings in the areas of printing, publishing and typography.

This was the last book of poems Lawrence saw published in his lifetime. The typescript sheds further light on Lawrence’s battle with the British censors in the wake of the controversy surrounding the private printing and postal distribution of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1928. Lawrence had an enlarged and unexpurgated Pansies privately published in August 1929. This recently-discovered typescript is a previously-unknown typing with corrections in Lawrence’s hand; it proves that Lawrence typed Pansies no fewer than four times. It is astonishing that the consumptive Lawrence, who hated the mechanical business of typing, could summon the energy to re-type his longest book of poems so often, barely twelve months before his death, but he was wholly committed to fighting censorship.

The volume was described thus in the sale catalogue: 'Donne, John. XXVI Sermons. London. 1661. Contemporary calf, rebacked. Folio (11 1/8 x 7 in.; 283 x 178 mm). Woodcut printer's device on title-page, woodcut headpiece, initials, and initial-frame. Provenance: Thomas Middleton (near contemporary signature on title-page); R. E. Myddelton, Chirk Castle (armorial bookplate, press-mark C.3.Divinity). Acquisition: Francis Edwards, 1969.’ It is likely that the signature is that of Sir Thomas Myddleton III (1624-63), who was created first Baronet in 1660. He was the grandson of Thomas Myddleton I, who purchased Chirk, became Lord Mayor of London in 1613, and was one of the founders of the East India Company.

This medieval manuscript written in Scotland and used by the monastic community of Sweetheart Abbey, a few miles south of Dumfries, in the later Middle Ages. Sweetheart Abbey was a Cistercian monastery founded in circa 1273 by Dervorgilla de Balliol, mother of the Scottish king John Balliol. The first leaf of the manuscript bears a large inscription in a medieval hand: 'Liber sanctae Mariae de dulci corde [a book of St. Mary of Sweetheart]'. Only four other manuscripts survive from the library of this monastery, bearing similar inscriptions, but none of these volumes was apparently written in Scotland.

The Muriel Spark archive is one of the largest held by the National Library of Scotland. Dame Muriel held onto almost everything on paper, so readers and researchers to delve into the collection, mining its abundant riches for new perspectives and a deeper understanding of one of Scotland's literary greats. This final tranche of the archive includes an unpublished poem, written at the age of 11 or 12; an early, unpublished story; the typescript of a radio play written in Africa; drafts and typescripts of essays; correspondence; annotated books from Dame Muriel’s library, together with the extensive and heavily annotated drafts and corrections to Martin Stannard’s biography.

This is Magdalen College Library's most significant purchase in recent decades, a volume containing all the major works of the English lutenist and composer John Dowland (1563?–1626). The volume was originally owned by Sir Charles Somerset (1587/8–1665), music collector, friend of Prince Henry Frederick (1594 –1612) and alumnus of Magdalen College. His close connections to the College give additional lustre to this acquisition. The acquistion was made possible thanks to a substantial additional grant awarded by the B H Breslauer Foundation.

Thomas Thirlby (circa 1500-1570) was the one of the last generation of Tudor bishops who were also diplomats in the service of the state. As bishop, successively, of Westminster, Norwich and Ely, Thirlby represented Henry VIII at the court of the Emperor Charles V, negotiated with the Scots on behalf of Edward VI and led an embassy to Rome following on from the accession of Mary I. The purpose of this mission, in 1555, was to gain papal confirmation for Cardinal Pole’s plans to reunite the English church with Rome. Their three months on the road saw the death not only of Pope Julius III, but also of his successor, Pope Marcellus II. By the time Thirlby arrived, he found instead the newly elected and pro-French Pope Paul IV. In spite of this, the negotiations were completed successfully.

One of only twelve manuscript missals for York use known to survive, and the only one left in private hands. It was written and illuminated in the early 15th century, although where it was actually made remains to be established. The volume bears interesting annotations and evidence of its use in the 15th and 16th centuries in the parish church of All Hallows, Broughton (near Preston, Lancashire), including some textual changes made in the course of the Reformation. It was rediscovered in Pleasington Hall, Lancashire, in the 1930s. It survives in its original (first) binding of tawed leather over wooden boards. Textually, it lacks its Canon miniature and a few leaves at the end, but is otherwise complete. It retains its York calendar, a crucial feature.

Rupert Brooke died on the eve of the battle of Gallipoli. His personal papers were divided between his mother and his friend Sir Edward Marsh. In 1930 Mrs Brooke bequeathed hers to his old Cambridge college, King’s College. Marsh’s papers about Brooke passed to his executor, who sold them to John Schroder, who continued to collect Rupert Brooke books and papers all his life. In acquiring the Schroder Collection, King’s College, Cambridge, has created single Brooke archive from the two largest and most significant collections.