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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.

This is a beautiful humanist edition of Boccaccio’s most famous work and one of the earliest with illustrations; the 101 woodcuts are copies from the 1492 incunable edition. This copy is also important for its position within the history of publishing the text; academic research on the edition concludes that it is based on the previous Florentine edition, but corrected using earlier manuscripts including quite possibly one of Boccaccio’s own originals. As well as its importance as a text, this copy has remarkable annotations by the Elizabethan spy William Herle (d. 1588/9), who worked for William Cecil and Francis Walsingham in the Low Countries.

Heywood’s drama is a significant addition to the Guildhall Library's collection of ‘Citizen’ dramas and is the only copy of this early edition in a public library. The play itself was performed at the Red Bull playhouse which is just a mile from Guildhall Library. It features London apprentices, including a Grocer and a Haberdasher – the archives of both of these guilds are held at Guildhall Library.

Chawton House Library has English translations of Staël’s best-selling novel Corinne (1807) and Delphine (1807), plus a fourth edition of Delphine (1818), but the first edition of Corinne was a significant omission from the collection. July 1817 saw two deaths – of Jane Austen (1775-1817), an English novelist with a solid but relatively modest success, and of Germaine de Staël (1766-1817), a long-standing superstar of pan-European intellectual, political and literary life. Over the two centuries since, the relative reputations of these two writers have re-aligned in ways that would have astonished their contemporaries, admirers and critics alike.

A two volume copy of The Remains of Henry Kirke White, Of Nottingham, Late of St. John’s College, Cambridge with an account of his life (1810) by Robert Southey. The book is a rare surviving possession of Mrs Maria Bronte, whose box, containing all her property, was shipwrecked off the Devonshire coast just before her marriage to Patrick Bronte in 1812. The book is heavily annotated by various members of the family and includes an unpublished poem by Charlotte.

The records relate to the North Yorkshire estates of the family at Norton Conyers and Nunnington and there are also papers from estates at Kippax, West Yorkshire and Bowland, Lancashire. The archive is therefore significant for the history of both North & West Yorkshire. There are a small number of medieval deeds but the majority of the papers date from the sixteenth to the twentieth century and the collection is particularly rich in seventeenth and eighteenth century material. Personal family papers and correspondence are well represented, giving a good picture of Graham family life through the ages and including a series of letters to Sir Richard Graham in the 1640s.
The archive sheds new light on the history of two outstanding North Yorkshire houses and strengthens our holdings of estate records in an area of the county which is currently under represented in our collections.

William succeeded his father Charles, 9th baron Stourton who died on 7 May 1633, and almost immediately appointed William Hussey and Robert Biflete as stewards to carry out the survey, which was completed in the following year. Although centred on Stourton, most of the manors were in Dorset, notably Gillingham, Lydlinch, Stourton Caundle in the north of the county and Overmoigne near Dorchester. The Somerset manors were Kingston by Yeovil and Frome Selwood. Penleigh in Westbury was the other Wiltshire manor. The volume will be of value to both the family historian, in providing names of freeholders, tenants and the lives on the leases and copyhold admissions, and the local historian with considerable topographical detail.

This volume provides a full survey of the estates of William Richardson in 1774, including a perambulation of the Manors of Rogate Bohunt and Clarks Dean. It records the acreage and cultivation of his lands and includes a fold-out map providing a detailed depiction of the properties and boundaries described in the survey.

These two letters from Richard Cobden to Charles Pelham Villiers (1843) and Michael Corr Van der Maeren (1856) provide an important insight into Cobden’s political views and will be of great interest to 19th century political historians, particularly when viewed in conjunction with the Cobden Archive held by West Sussex Record Office. Villiers was the chief parliamentary ally of the Anti-Corn Law League whilst Van der Maeren was the founder of the Belgium Association for Free Trade.