32 grants for 2012.
This advice guide for female servants sets out rules of behaviour designed to promote their industriousness, preserve their characters and prevent any misbehaviour likely 'to result in their ending…their miserable days in an hospital or work-house…or [finding] their death-bed on a dunghill' and is a remarkably rare survival.
This impressive volume was the subject of a temporary export ban by the Culture Minister in 2012. The restriction was enforced because of the rarity of the item and its unique value for local and national historians.
The manuscript comprises seven pages of script, the draft of a chapter of Imogen Holst's book about her father. The chapter in question discusses The Planets Suite, Gustav Holst's most famous composition.
The composition was inspired by Holst's holiday in Algeria in 1908. The Moorish melodies he heard on the streets poured onto the page to create a distinct sound.
A wonderful collection of glass plates and negatives (black and white and colour).
One of the last letters written by Captain Robert Falcon Scott from his final camp in Antarctica was purchased by the Scott Polar Research Institute.
A translation of Addison's play 'Cato' which was dedicated to Henry, 3rd Lord Coleraine, Henry Hare (1693-1749), lord of the manor at Bruce Castle from 1708-1749.
Since Archbishop's Abbot's death in 1633, Lambeth Palace Library has been home to most of his library, amounting to some 2,600 books and manuscripts.…
The collection includes architect’s drawings of the New Wesleyan Methodist Chapel at Bridport by James Wilson of Belmont, Bath, together with estimates, specifications and contracts of the builder, Charles Galpin, 1838. The Grade II former Wesleyan Chapel in Bridport, an important civic building, now houses the town’s arts centre.
The series of Godmanchester manorial records at Huntingdonshire Archives is of special interest for two reasons: first because it is one of the finest and most extensive of the county (including the enlarged modern county of Cambridgeshire), and secondly because the government of medieval Godmanchester was rather unusual: thanks to a 1212 charter o…
The manuscripts of Reading Abbey were widely dispersed following the Dissolution, and such as have survived have gradually found their way into numerous libraries and archives scattered across the United Kingdom and the United States.
Letters Patent granting arms to the illegitimate daughters of Thomas Peter Legh (1753-1797). The right to arms passes to all descendants of an acknowledged ‘grantee’ in the legitimate male line but the right must be established by recording their pedigree at the College of Arms.
Horned Beetles is the first édition de luxe from the Gehenna Press. Arguably the most beautiful of all its illustrated books, it formed a significant step in the development of private press books of the period.…
Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier), is the prototype of the 'courtesy book 'and the classic picture of the ideal renaissance courtier, prince, and enlightened ruler.…
An unpublished letter written by Joseph Priestley, the scientist and Unitarian theologian, from Northumberland, Pennsylvania, to his close friend Theophilus Lindsey in July 1794. The letter is clearly part of the sequence of letters Priestley wrote from America between 1794 and 1803 already held by the Library.
The National Library of Scotland has worked since the 1950s to build an unrivalled collection of modern Scottish Literary papers. This collection of almost 100 letters from Mackay Brown to Kenna Crawford, as well as 26 manuscript poems.…
Autograph Letter, Autograph Postcard, eight Typed Letters and two Christmas cards, all signed, Hull and University of Hull, 21 April 1956 to 6 February 1985, various sizes, 13 pages (excluding the Christmas cards), some with envelopes, to Anthony Thwaite. Some of these letters appear in Thwaite’s edition of Selected Letters, other
Robert, the son of Ralph de Alderstead of Merstham in Surrey, probably assumed the surname Pashley only on his marriage to Sarah, the heiress of an estate centred on Pashley in Ticehurst, in about 1265. His son Sir Edmund Pashley pursued a career in the common law.…
Robert, the son of Ralph de Alderstead of Merstham in Surrey, probably assumed the surname Pashley only on his marriage to Sarah, the heiress of an estate centred on Pashley in Ticehurst, in about 1265. His son Sir Edmund Pashley pursued a career in the common law.
Dr Giles Roberts (1766-1834) was a prominent physician in Bridport. His family was part of the new merchant class and were able to give him an education; he developed an interest in science and medica botany. By thirteen he had developed some early medicines.
Dr Giles Roberts (1766-1834) was a prominent physician in Bridport. His family was part of the new merchant class, the rising middle class of its time. They were able to give him an education, and he instructed himself in a range of scientific topics by reading and experimentation.
A bound volume containing three relatively rare printed pamphlets of the period (listed below) and a little gem – a contemporary manuscript plan apparently showing the proposed defences of the City.
George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon (of the 2nd creation), diplomat and Liberal politician, was a key player in mid- to late- nineteenth century diplomacy and politics.
Hamish Scott Henderson was a published poet and member of the Scottish literary renaissance of the later twentieth century, a folksong collector and promoter of the folksong revival, a cultural historian, a Scottish nationalist, an international democratic socialist, a European intellectual and a campaigner for numerous causes.
Philip Miller’s Gardener's Dictionary was one of the most popular gardening books of the 18th century. Miller was an expert botanist and gardener, and the book was published in many different forms and editions: the first edition appeared in 1724, and the last edition in 1807.
Captain Samuel Gurney Cresswell (1827-67), Arctic explorer and artist, and the first naval officer to cross the entire North-West Passage, is a major figure in the history of Arctic exploration. In Norfolk, he is regarded as one of the county’s great heroes.
This is an exceptionally rare early 11th-century charter. The Godwine Charter is a single-sheet Anglo-Saxon charter written in Old English, on parchment, in the form of a chirograph. The hand of this charter can be accepted as contemporary with the date of the document: many Anglo-Saxon charters are later forgeries.
A group of six carefully selected books. The principal volumes, all extremely rare, include Paride del Pozzo’s Duello (Venice, 1544), originally published in Naples not later than 1478, which was highly influential, especially on the work of the renowned Bolognese fencing master Achille Marozzo.
Superintendent William Donaldson, commanded the Dorking Police Force from its foundation in 1838 to its amalgamation into the newly formed Surrey County Constabulary in 1851.…
These eight pocket sized engagement diaries belonging to Virginia Woolf record in brief the author’s daily appointments. They directly complement the holdings within the Monks House Papers which were given to the University of Sussex in 1972.
The Westmorland of Apethorpe Archive is of pre-eminent regional, national and international importance. This status is confirmed both by its acceptance in lieu of tax and also by the fact that it is among the 120 estate and family archives that The National Archives considers to be the most significant in the UK.
This interesting book consists of seven didactic and moral tales, such as ‘The dangers of curiousity’,‘The little rattlehead’ and ‘Juvenile arrogance’, each illustrated with charming head- and tail-pieces: the horses frightened by a snake at the end of ‘Tale the Second: The little busy body’ are particularly attractive.…
