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A small, yet important group of literary papers relating to the poet, writer and soldier Edward Thomas (1878-1917). The items acquired were all once in the possession of Thomas’s friend, the Gloucester lawyer and bibliophile Jack Haines (1875-1960). The most significant and interesting item is a school exercise book once used by Myfanwy, Thomas’s daughter, which was reused by him to write his poetry. Although only eight leaves remain in the book, they contain multiple drafts, in his own hand, of two of his very earliest poems, ‘The Mountain Chapel’ and ‘Birds’ Nests’. They are dated 17 and 18 December respectively, only a few weeks after Thomas began writing poetry in earnest.

The unpublished letter, written in 1755, and the only known correspondence with Traill, concerns Hume’s recent reading of a sermon by Traill where he confronts Hume’s disparaging remarks about the Scottish clergy. Hume had previously criticised them in his 1748 essay ‘Of National Characters’ where he remarked that their need to ‘feign more devotion than they are… possessed of’ led them to ‘promote the spirit of superstition, by a continued grimace and hypocrisy’. Traill responded with his published sermon The Qualifications and Decorum of a Teacher of Christianity Considered (1755).

The daguerreotype is one of London Metropolitan Archives’ earliest photographs of a City of London scene and the only known stereoscopic daguerreotype of a City of London street scene. London Metropolitan Archives has scarcely a handful of photographs taken before 1860 and none that show the riverfront in the City pre-1860. The photograph is likely to have been taken from the site of Albion Mills, looking across the river towards the City with St Paul’s prominently rising above the warehouses and wharves on the riverside. This particular view is not well represented at this date by known prints and drawings and none approach the level of detail in the Duboscq stereoscopic daguerreotype.

In 1768 he published the first two volumes of A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy promising his subscribers that the remaining two volumes would be published ‘early the next Winter’. Sterne died a month later leaving the story incomplete.

The original watercolour drawing by Leloir on the half-title (each one unique to every copy in this limited edition) does not seem to make a direct reference to the narrative of the text and so Leloir seems to be creating new, unique scenes in addition to the illustrations throughout the text.

The only printed book from Morton’s library known to survive in private hands: it is again a Venetian edition of the 1470s, of the Institutiones oratoriae, a textbook on the theory and practice of eloquence by the classical Roman rhetorician, Marcus Fabius Quintilianus. This work, which quickly established itself in humanist educational circles, may also have had practical uses for Morton, who could well have bought it new during one of his diplomatic missions to France, Flanders or Rome in the 1470s and 1480s. Typographically a strikingly beautiful book, it bears Morton’s handsomely painted arms on its first leaf, and below this a rebus, punning on Morton’s name – a barrel, or tun, with the letters MOR. Running through this copy is a system of foliation and subject headings, written in the upper margins in a 15th-century English hand, which seems to be common to several of Morton’s surviving books.

The manuscript’s value lies not only in the wealth of detail it provides about this otherwise little known episode in British diplomatic history but also in Lewis’s copious observations on the island of Madagascar itself. A sketch map of the island is one of the earliest to contain demographic information and Lewis also included geodetic data, enabling him to calculate the size of this huge land mass. A fold-out map of the harbour of Tamatave is possibly the earliest cartographic representation of this port. Lewis appears to have been particularly interested in the languages of Madagascar and the manuscript includes an Ovah alphabet.

Prior to its acquisition by the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association, John Keats’s letter to Thomas Monkhouse, dated 21 June 1818, had always been in private hands and hardly ever seen by scholars.

To the best of our knowledge the drawings are not in any public record office and they complement material presented by the Rennie family some years ago. We have both John and Sir John Rennie’s report books including one volume specifically relating to the Lancaster Canal. We also have a volume of specifications relating to the canal. Although we have a number of prints of engineering works which belonged to the family there are only a few drawings and no original drawings of his canal schemes. It is ICE policy to collect drawings representative of the full range of works carried out by the profession historically.

The drawings show proposed structures to be built on the canal and are dated 1794. They are all signed by Rennie and the contractor.

A significant quantity of papers of John ('Jack') Wilton Haines (1875-1960), dubbed the ‘friend of poets’ by Walter de la Mare. Important in their own right, these papers are also intimately related to the J W Haines archive which we already hold and with which they can now be re-united.

It was fortuitous for Haines that many leading cultural figures of the early 20th century were Gloucestershire residents. A surplus of empty, cheap cottages for rent in the village of Dymock, near Gloucester, had attracted a gathering of lowly paid, often impoverished poets and their families including Robert Frost, Wilfrid Gibson, Lascelles Abercrombie and Rupert Brooke.

Fifty seven issues of the rare Dutch art, design and architecture periodical Wendingen. Published monthly between 1918 and 1932, initially by the Amsterdam-based de Hooge Brug, and from 1924, the Santpoort firm of C.A.Mees, Wendingen is regarded as one of the most progressive publications of its time. Each issue was considered an art object in itself, and was printed on double-fold paper, hand-bound with raffia, and wrapped with a lithographed or woodcut cover specifically designed for its theme by a member of the artistic avant-garde. The magazine’s highly experimental typography extended to its advertisements, which were integrated into the overall design.