35 grants for 2013.
The Venetian state maintained an historic collection of the finest artillery produced in the Arsenal, but sadly all these pieces were taken by the French in 1798 and all but one were melted down. This makes the work Artiglieria Veneta by the Republic’s last director of artillery, Domenico Gasperoni, all the more important.…
a late autograph draft manuscript of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ celebrated poem 'Binsey Poplars'. The last known major Hopkins manuscript to have been in private hands, ‘Binsey Poplars’ was the most significant Hopkins item to have come to the market in over forty years.
This handwritten receipt by Thomas Gainsborough is for the sum of 15 guineas received for a half-length portrait (which was 50 x 40 inches canvas). The portrait, now lost, was painted during the period he was living in Ipswich in the 1750s.
This substantial collection of manuscripts relating to the artist, engraver and naturalist Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) was amassed over a lifetime of research and scholarship by Iain Bain. It includes working drafts and notes, correspondence, posthumous letters and documents, and invoices, accounts, notebooks and other papers.
This edition of Delightes is bound with another slim household recipe book, A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen, which is anonymous but may also be one of Plat’s works--the two certainly were commonly bound together after this 1611 edition.…
This volume from the library of William Beckford (1760-1844) is bound with the distinctive Beckford Fonthill binding, which combines two motifs from Beckford’s coat of arms on the spine. Tipped in to face the title-page is a fine wash drawing of Amiens Cathedral with the pencil note below: ‘after a finished Sketch by W[illiam] B[eckford]’.…
The National Library of Scotland has significant holdings of sources for Scottish military history, but most are the work of the gentry or aristocracy. Diaries kept by ordinary soldiers are extremely rare, especially at the time of the Jacobite Risings, and opportunities to acquire such items are few and far between.
The Lacock Abbey Archive was on deposit at the Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, but the owner wished to sell the collection. It is a large estate archive of outstanding local, national and international importance and was in danger of being broken up had it not been purchased by the Archive Service.…
Laurie Lee is perhaps the most famous of the numerous writers who have made the Stroud Valleys their home over the years. The public venue of the museum service, the Museum in the Park, Stroud, already displays Laurie’s violin, as well as other personal memorabilia and copies of his most well-known works, including Cider with Rosie.
Coleridge wrote this letter to his brother George while he and Wordsworth were staying in Kendal. It can be fairly described as a manifesto issued at a turning point of his life: after his return from Malta and not long before his estrangement from Wordsworth.
Iris Murdoch wrote the 9 undated autograph letters to Wallace Robson, together with 11 poems, between March 1952 and March 1954. Murdoch met Robson in 1950 when he was Fellow in English at Lincoln College Oxford.
Iris Murdoch wrote the 9 undated autograph letters to Wallace Robson, together with 11 poems, between March 1952 and March 1954. Murdoch met Robson in 1950 when he was Fellow in English at Lincoln College Oxford.
Hester Lynch Piozzi (formerly Thrale, née Salusbury) is well known as the friend of Dr Samuel Johnson, and the hostess of a brilliant literary circle.
The sequence of letters to Rachel Fenner comprises about 215 autograph letters, together with 85 autograph postcards and other notes from Iris Murdoch written between 1964 and 1993. Rachel Fenner is a highly respected environmental sculptress and public artist, and was anxious that these letters should remain in the UK.
The acquisition of this exceptional collection of letters from Iris Murdoch to Sir Leo Pliatzky, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Trade and knighted in 1977, will ensure that important documents illustrating the literary, political and philosophical zeitgeist of mid to late twentieth century Europe will now remain in the UK, be preserved
A grant from the Friends of the National Libraries enabled Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service to purchase this rare item, issued only a few months into Edward's reign.
John Wilson (1785-1854), the author and journalist, who usually wrote under the pseudonym ‘Christopher North’, was among the pre-eminent Scottish literary figures of his day.…
The bulk of the collection consists of letters written by William, Percy and Sydney Spencer, three of the brothers of Stanley Spencer, the artist, mostly written to their sister Florence Image (aunt of Pamela, to whom they ultimately descended). Percy and Sydney write extensively of their wartime experiences on the Western Front.
Malcolm Elwin was born in 1903, the son of a Nottingham businessman. He was privately educated (possibly on health grounds) and became a student at University College, Oxford, but seems to have left without a degree in order to embark on a literary career. As that career progressed during the 1930s he corresponded with many of the figures of the…
an important collection of military diaries, memoirs and letters written by two generations of the Morant family from 1845 to 1919.
This archive had been held on deposit with West Glamorgan Archives Service for more than twenty years and, as a rare survival of engineering drawings from the early period of the industrial revolution, constituted one of our most important collections from both a UK and a Welsh nation
An edition of the complete works of the Latin grammarian Priscian, whose writings were used as the basis for the teaching of Latin grammar until the fifteenth century and as a source for extracts from classical authors whose works have otherwise been lost.…
The previously unknown proof with extensive autograph revisions would have been intriguing enough for the Tennyson Research Centre in Lincoln, where there are 200 sets of proofs of Tennyson's poems from his earliest volume through to his last, by far the biggest collection in the world, but it came with added benefits.
A copy of this book is listed in the first catalogue of the Plume Library, 1704, but it subsequently went missing. Early in 2013 an opportunity arose to replace it, and with the generous support of The Friends of the National Libraries this has now been done.…
At the heart of Northumberland Archives collections are estate and personal records of landed families.
Sir William Hamilton (1731-1803), now perhaps better known as the cuckolded husband of Nelson's Emma Hamilton, was ideally placed as a diplomat in Naples to pursue his interests in art and classical antiquities. This work covers his collection from the tombs in Sicily.…
Whistler was one of the most prolific, diverse and popular artists of the interwar years in England. Known for his wit and humour, he was equally talented in a wide variety of pursuits--as an illustrator, muralist, designer for the performing arts and painter in oils; few artists have excelled in as many oeuvres.
Haringey Archive includes a significant collection of manorial documents and court rolls for the Manor of Tottenham. The collection is a fascinating source of local information and is still held in Bruce Castle, the 500-year-old former manor house of Tottenham, on the site of the original medieval manor house.
The most important contemporary account of the life of Archbishop Thomas Becket, murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in December 1170 and canonised in April 1173, was written by his closest friend, companion and secretary, Herbert of Bosham (c.1120-c.1194).
The family and estate archive of the Pendarves family had been held on deposit at Cornwall Record Office in Truro since November 1953.
The item was printed in Edinburgh by James Ballantyne. The full title is 'The Ettricke Garland: Being Two Excellent New Songs on the Lifting of the Banner of the House of Buccleugh at the great football match on Carterhaugh Dec. 4, 1815'.…
The last significant portion of material in private hands relating to Henry Talbot, pioneer of photography. While Talbot is best known today for his invention of two photographic processes - the photogenic drawing, announced in 1839, and the calotype, patented in 1841 - his achievements went far beyond photography.…
This collection of over 150 letters and deeds dating from 1604-1777 relates to the Sandford family of Sandford Hall, Shropshire.
The two manuscripts now form the nucleus of a remarkable collection of literary and material objects the College has recently assembled relating to its most famous modern literary son.
In February 1842, Charlotte and Emily Brontë became students at the Pensionnat Héger in Brussels. For the next nine months they worked unrelentingly, producing a series of devoirs (homework essays) in response to instructions given by their tutor, Constantin Héger.
