Grants awarded in 2009

Iris Murdoch's letters to the French writer Raymond Queneau, mostly written 1946-75, contain her thoughts on her embryonic writing career, God, philosophy, her emotional state and much else, and are an invaluable source for tracking the influences that inspired and shaped her novels.

A copy of the first edition of Coleridge's verse translation of his friend Hyman Hurwitz's Kinat Yeshurun', one of only five copies known in the UK. The MS verses, containing the last 17 lines of 'The Garden of Boccaccio' , apparently predate the published version and differ from it in several ways.

Dr Bent Juel-Jensen, a former Medical Officer to the University of Oxford, was one of the principal book collectors of his generation and a generous benefactor to the Bodleian Library, to which he made outstanding gifts of books in his lifetime.

A liturgical manuscript containing the text of the Day Office, Prime, Terce, Sext and None, recited by Carthusian monks in their cells. A rare survival, almost certainly from the London Charterhouse.

A rare and important publication drawing attention to the close ties between the women's dress reform movements in Germany and Scotland. It is a significant addition the Museum's holdings on these movements.

Most of the deeds and papers, filling fifteen archive boxes, date from 1666-1927, when the Melton estate belonged to the Fountayne family, and from 1826 the Montagu family, following a change of name.

50 deeds and documents, 15-16th cent,, relating to Mascy property, including deeds relating to the establishment and dissolution of the Hollinfare chantry chapel, and a court roll of the manor of Glazebrook, 15th cent. The collection supplements the Mascy deeds bought with FNL help in 2008

The township of Forton, part of the pre-Conquest estates of Earl Tostig, passed to the newly-founded Premonstratensian Abbey of Cockersand in the late 12th century.

A substantial group of 95 medieval deeds relating mostly to the Gore family. Thomas Gore, the antiquary and contemporary of John Aubrey, transcribed them for the manuscript history of his family, 'Syntagma Genealogicum', now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Scott's account of the rediscovery of the Scottish Regalia, which were sealed up in 1707 by order of the Treasury Commissioners, and kept in a chest in the Crown Room of Edinburgh Castle, lest the sight of them should inspire separatist sentiment.

A previously unrecorded drawing for the south and west elevations of the Court House. Robert Adam was Kinross County's MP 1768-74; the Court House was the major public building in his constituency, and he paid for the improvements in the south and west elevations himself.

The Gaugains were a dynasty of minor painters and engravers of French origin but established in London by the mid-18th century. The present collection of letters of Philip Augustus Gaugain fl. 1783-1847) and other members of his family are of much interest for the history of the art trade.

Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) was Clarenceux King of Arms, an office he claimed to have acquired 'in jest' when he resigned it in 1725. The Grant, signed by Anstis and Vanbrugh, is calligraphically written and finely illuminated.

The letter-book contains copies of 87 of Pole's more important letters to popes, cardinals and sovereigns, including a moving letter written in 1541 after the execution of his mother, the Countess of Salisbury, in which he denounced Henry as another Nero, Herod or Caligula.

A volume of autograph contemporary copies of letters by Andrew Lumisden, antiquary and Secretary to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, for the year 1763.

These unpublished letters were part of the private collection of the late Paula Peyraud (b. 1947), a reclusive librarian from Chappaqua, New York, who assembled an outstanding collection of literary materials relating to the Bluestockings.

An original court-book for Brough and Winton, 1705-1839, and transcripts of custumals, including indentured agreements between Philip, Lord Wharton, and his customary tenants of the manor of Ravenstonedale, 1579/80. The originals no longer survive, and the transcripts, from 1632 and 1738, are the only record of their contents.

A very early partly coloured map of part of the parish of Dormston, seen and copied by the Worcestershire antiquary Peter Prattinton in 1826, who described it as 'a very old rude map', and then lost to sight for 180 years.

The mostly typed letters, written to an admirer in response to his questions about Rebecca, are a good source of information on the characters and topography of Daphne du Maurier's most famous novel.

Jeff Nuttall, artist, poet, jazz musician, social commentator and teacher, disposed of most of his papers but retained the present collection, which he called 'The 60s Box'. The archives include literary and artistic works and many letters from notable poets, writers and artists.

An important addition to the Library's collection of early Scottish scientific papers, this manuscript, in a contemporary calf binding, includes sections on mathematics, law and astronomy, with notes and ex libris inscription indicating that it was the work of William Baird of Dysart, Fife.

The papers are divided into eleven groups, ten of them comprising the accumulations of title deeds and other estate records of the successive families who owned the Aberglasne Estate, beginning with the Rudds, who acquired the estate from the Thomases in the 17th century.

Paul Nash (1889-1946) spent more time and care on his illustrations of Sir Thomas Browne's famous work, first published in 1658, than on any other of his book projects. The present copy, no. 183 of an edition of 215, contains fifteen full-page and seventeen half-page collotype illustrations.

Wesley's composition was completed in 1799, but it did not receive its first performance until 1826. Some parts are in Wesley's own hand, others are the work of Samuel Coad and another unidentified copyist.