Search FNL grants since 1931

Displaying 71 - 80 of 1973
Author: William Cowper
Item date: 1782
Date acquired: 2020
Grant Value: £5,000 [B H Breslauer Foundation Fund]
Item cost: £6,750
Institution: Chawton House Library
Town/City: Chawton
County: Hampshire

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.

Author: Sir Nevill Francis Mott (1905–1996)
Item date: 1948-1966
Date acquired: 2020
Grant Value: £5040
Item cost: £12,600
Institution: Cambridge University Library
Town/City: Cambridge
County: Cambridgeshire

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.

Author: Adam Smith
Item date: 1811/1817
Date acquired: 2020
Grant Value: £6,000 [B H Breslauer Foundation Fund]
Item cost: £13,000
Institution: Cambridge University Library
Town/City: Cambridge
County: Cambridgeshire

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.

Author: Benjamin Schultze (1689-1760)
Item date: 1721
Date acquired: 2020
Grant Value: £2,000
Item cost: £3,950
Institution: Cambridge University Library
Town/City: Cambridge
County: Cambridgeshire

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

Author: John Donne (1572-1631)
Item date: c1625
Date acquired: 2019
Grant Value: £15,000 [B H Breslauer Foundation Fund]
Item cost: £397,800
Institution: British Library
Town/City: London

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.

Author: Lewis of Caerleon
Item date: late 15th century
Date acquired: 2020
Grant Value: £15,000 [B H Breslauer Foundation Fund]
Item cost: £300,000
Institution: British Library
Town/City: London

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.

Author: Mary Shelley
Item date: 1832
Date acquired: 2020
Grant Value: £15,000
Item cost: £57,000
Institution: Bodleian Library
Town/City: Oxford
County: Oxfordshire

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.

Item date: 1763; printed by John Baskerville, Cambridge
Date acquired: 2020
Grant Value: £6,000 [B H Breslauer Foundation Fund]
Item cost: £13,000
Institution: Birmingham University
Town/City: Birmingham
County: West Midlands

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.

Author: R S Thomas (1913-2000)
Item date: 1966-1976
Grant Value: £10,000
Item cost: £40,000
Institution: Bangor University
Town/City: Bangor
County: Gwynedd

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. 

Author: John Henry Muirhead
Item date: Oct 8th 1889 - May 1st 1890
Date acquired: 2020
Grant Value: £900
Item cost: £1,200
Institution: Balliol College
Town/City: Oxford
County: Oxfordshire

Emily A. Atkinson sat in a lecture hall 131 years ago assiduously taking notes on mental and moral philosophy. She was one of the first cohort of students to pass through Royal Holloway College, founded three years before, in 1886, for the education of women. The lecturer was John Henry Muirhead, freshly appointed to the post, in an early step in a long teaching career. The notes form a small volume bound in marbled paper, signed by Atkinson inside the front cover. Covering topics such as “Ethics”, “Plato’s Republic” and “Butler’s Sermons on Human Nature” they date from 8 October 1889 until 8 May 1890.