Search FNL grants since 1931

Maureen Selley, Secretary, writes:   The North Devon Record Office in Barnstaple, Devon, holds some material relating to the North Devon Infirmary, but it has no list of subscribers or benefactors in its collections.

This rare first edition of William Cowper’s Poems, published in 1782, once belonged to Jane Austen’s brother Edward Austen Knight and was very likely read by Austen herself during her visits to her brother’s Kent estate. Edward inherited the estates of Chawton in Hampshire and Godmersham Park from wealthy relatives of his father; when he was made heir he took the name of Knight.

A collection of autograph letters from the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Professor Sir Nevill Francis Mott (Director of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, and Master of Gonville & Caius College) to Yvette Cauchois, a highly eminent physicist who became the second woman (after Marie Curie) to be President of the French Society for Physical Chemistry.

The book in itself is not a rare edition of Smith; the value for research lies in the presentation of the copy. It is interleaved and contains over 180 pages of manuscript notes by a student attending a series of lectures given by Robert Malthus to students at the Haileybury East India College, which trained administrators for the Honourable East India Company.

A scarce tract printed at the Danish Mission in Tranquebar (Tharangambadi) in 1721, an early example of printing in the Tamil language.

Dr Alexander Lock, Curator of Modern Archives and Manuscripts, writes: John Donne (1572–1631) was one of the most popular poets of the late 16th and early 17th centuries and is considered to be one of the greatest Renaissance writers in the English canon.

Made around the year 1500, this manuscript contains the most complete collection of the works of Lewis of Caerleon, an astronomer and physician to the household of King Henry VII of England. Loyal to the Tudor cause, Lewis had been imprisoned in the Tower of London by Richard III. This manuscript includes his astronomical observations, some of which were made from the Tower itself.
Acquired under export regulations.

Mary Shelley’s ‘The Invisible Girl’ was published in The Keepsake annual for 1833, described as being ‘by the Author of Frankenstein’. The manuscript consists of four pages of autograph manuscript text, with autograph revisions throughout, paginated 5 to 8 (single bifolium, 230 x 185mm). The manuscript has the lower portion of the second leaf cut away, but there is no apparent loss of text.

In addition to being leading figures in the Midland Industrial Enlightenment the inventor and manufacturer Matthew Boulton (1728–1809) and the entrepreneur printer and typographer John Baskerville (1707–75) were personal friends. A mark of their mutual esteem is the magnificent copy of Baskerville’s celebrated 1763 Cambridge Bible.

The R.S. Thomas Research Centre at Bangor University, the poet’s alma mater, houses a unique collection of R.S. Thomas manuscripts, letters, journals and memorabilia, built up over the last two decades, an archive which in normal times receives many visitors from the UK and abroad. The present purchase represents a major addition to our already substantial holdings. We believe it to be, in fact, the most significant collection of R.S. Thomas material which remained in private hands.