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The Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading purchase of twenty-two rare agricultural pamphlets from the mid-19th century, which relate to the agricultural innovations and economics of the period, enhancing its existing collection strengths in British agricultural history. The collection includes rare works on early applications of agricultural chemistry, studies of production and demand, and farmers’ reports on the use of new agricultural equipment. They provide a unique insight into the economic and technological developments in British agriculture in the mid-19th century, a pivotal period that marked the final stages of the British Agricultural Revolution.

In September 2016, the Norfolk Record Office purchased a wide range of documents sold at auction in the Morningthorpe Manor Country House Sale. A keen local collector had accumulated this eclectic array of documents over a number of decades. It ranged in date from the 15th to the 20th century and included diaries, deeds, maps, photographs, playbills, manorial records, estate records, travel journals, business records and political broadsheets. However, there was one strong theme linking everything together: Norfolk. It was estimated that the Record Office would require about £30,000 to secure the items of clear significance to the county’s heritage. However, the Record Office did not have purchase funds available – it needed to raise money and to do so very quickly.

A major contribution was made by the Friends of the National Libraries who not only provided a grant of £5,000, but also were able to make a decision extremely quickly. This meant that the £5,000 could be used as a seed of a campaign from which the Record Office’s fundraising partner, NORAH (the Norfolk Archives and Heritage Development Foundation) was able to secure an additional £25,000. Having reached its target the Record Office was able to secure 86 lots at the sale.

The book was written by Virginia Woolf for her lover Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962), who was born and brought up at Knole. It tells the story of the house through the life of Orlando, a character whose life spans the 400–year history of Knole and who mysteriously changes sex half way through. The book was published the year Vita’s father died and Knole passed to her uncle, Major Charles Sackville-West (Edward Sackville-West’s father), thus cutting Vita’s ties with her childhood home. When Woolf wrote Orlando she sought to capture in fiction Vita’s feelings for Knole and her aristocratic heritage. The character Orlando was effectively a mythologised portrait of Vita.

An important letter from poet and artist David Jones (1895-1974), author of In Parenthesis, to novelist Anthony Powell. The letter was bought for the National Library of Wales with the aid of a grant of £650 from the Friends of the National Libraries.

The letter, which is dated 10-11 July 1967, discusses Welsh history and genealogy, topics on which these two men of letters - both of Welsh descent - shared a common interest. The National Library of Wales’ extensive David Jones Archive - the most complete archive of the artist-poet’s work in existence - contains two associated letters from Powell to Jones, dated 8 and 16 July 1967 respectively (NLW, David Jones Papers, CT2/2). It also contains a draft of a letter from Jones to Powell, dated 15 July 1967, but in fact responding to Powell’s letter of 16 July (NLW, David Jones Papers, CF1/12, f. 12).

The 38 letters of Robert Louis Stevenson to Anne Jenkin are published in the comprehensive Yale edition of his letters, but of the 15 which Fanny sent to Anne, only the heart-rending letter written the day after Stevenson’s death is known to be published. It is therefore in Fanny’s letters that the research value of the collection probably lies.

Anne was the widow of Fleeming Jenkin, Professor of Engineering at Edinburgh University. In that capacity he taught Stevenson, and though the latter showed little aptitude or interest in the subject, the two became close friends and Stevenson enjoyed visiting the Jenkin family in Edinburgh. Like Stevenson, the Jenkins were fond of amateur dramatics, and with their three young sons Stevenson must have been in his boyish element. Fleeming Jenkin died very suddenly in 1885 aged 52, and this correspondence begins when Anne asks Stevenson to write a memoir of her husband. A postscript to the earliest Stevenson letter in the collection reads ‘Dear me, what happiness I owe to both of you!’

A manuscript memorandum book made for Archbishop Thomas Bourchier (c.1411-1486). Bourchier was Archbishop of Canterbury for 32 years, during the tumultuous period of the Wars of the Roses: he crowned Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII. His activities within the diocese of Canterbury, however, are less well documented. The official record of this Archbishop’s administration is held by Lambeth Palace Library, as part of its long series of archiepiscopal registers from 1279 onwards. F.R.H. du Boulay, in his published edition (1957) of Bourchier’s register, notes that it contains no visitation returns and is in some other ways less complete than one might have expected, perhaps suggesting physical loss or that some information was never formally written up. This may not be wholly surprising, given the disruptive events that were taking place at the same time.

The volume which has now been acquired may help to fill some of the gaps in our knowledge of the more local aspects of Bourchier’s tenure of the see of Canterbury and thereafter.

In 2016, a collection of the papers of James Watt was donated by the Watt family to the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. The donation was made through Friends of the National Libraries.

Watt was a master at the Royal Naval College at Osborne, and tutored the two eldest sons of George V and Queen Mary, both future Kings.

The collection includes Royal Naval College reports for the Prince of Wales, autograph letters from the Princes, and about 75 letters from Henry Hansell (tutor to the royal children) to Watt with drafts of his own letters to Hansell.

A letter written to the Marquess of Buckingham by Sir George Calvert in November 1622, when Calvert was one of the two principal Secretaries of State to James I, with responsibility for external affairs. George Calvert was born on the Kiplin estate in 1579 and built Kiplin Hall in the early 1620s. In 1620 he founded a colony in Newfoundland, which he named Avalon. He was created 1st Baron Baltimore in 1625 and founded Maryland in 1632, just before his death.

Sir William Hamilton (1731-1803), now perhaps better known as the cuckolded husband of Nelson's Emma Hamilton, was ideally placed as a diplomat in Naples to pursue his interests in art and classical antiquities. This work covers his collection from the tombs in Sicily. Its striking plates, accompanied by parallel texts in French and English, were drawn and engraved by Johann Tischbein (1751-1828), director of the Naples Academy and travelling companion of Goethe. Many surviving copies are in grand bindings but the Mount Stewart copy is still in its original boards with roan spines, and entirely uncut, making it a useful source for those interested in the history of book production, as well as for the art historian.

The volume contains 20 issues of a rare 19th century periodical, the British Guiana Monthly Messenger, and four equally rare 19th century British Guiana pamphlets.This is an important acquisition for the library of King's College London, complementing and enhancing our already extensive and internationally significant holdings in the field of British imperial and colonial history. By virtue of the extreme rarity of its contents, as well as their intrinsic interest, this volume has the potential to cast new light on the then colony of British Guiana at an important period in its history.