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Contains the signature of Thomas Newcomen, inventor of the first practical atmospheric steam engine, acknowledging receipt of rental for one of his engines from Edward Short.

Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1928) was the half-sister of the 6th Duke of Portland. In 1902 she married Philip Morrell in 1902 and until 1915, they lived in Bloomsbury where she established herself as a literary and political hostess. From 1915 they lived at Garsington Manor, near Oxford.

This set of an extremely rare botanical monograph contains 1,187 hand-coloured engraved plates and is bound in a contemporary half-leather binding. Volumes 1 to 2 were written by Vietz, an Austrian physician, who later became Professor of Forensic Medicine at Vienna University.

Edward Grigg, 1st Lord Altrincham (1879-1955) was a journalist, public servant and politician. The archive reflects all aspects of his life, including the India of his childhood, his period as a journalist with The Times, his service in the First World War and his political career.

Britten wrote Peter Grimes in 1944 to 1945 and the opera was first performed at the newly re-opened Sadler's Wells on 7 June 1945. The acquisition of these leaves sheds light on the gestation of the work and provide evidence of the composer's changes of mind.

The gem of these maps depicts the Manor of Little Abington and was made in 1603 by John Norden, one of the foremost Elizabethan and Jacobean topographers.

This is the autograph draft of the last four pages, in full score, of Elgar's Cello Concerto, which the composer gave to Sir Edward Speyer. This concerto was Elgar's last major orchestral composition.

The manuscript East End of Crowland Abbey by John Clare is significant as it is the first manuscript of this poem which was later published in The Rural Muse (1835). It is accompanied by the pen-and-ink drawing, which inspired the poem, by Francis Simpson (1796-1861).

The 7 letters relate to Lutyens' designs for Crooksbury, near Farnham in Surrey, his first major commission as an independent architect and for a substantial country house for Sir Arthur Chapman.

This is the first printed Christian scripture in Chinese. The Gospels were translated into Chinese by Johannes Lasser and Joshua Marshman. The volume was printed on Chinese paper at Serampore in 1810.