Grants awarded in 2014

This is an unrecorded first issue of Edward Jenner’s first publication which was printed by J. Bence of Wotton-under-Edge in 1783. Jenner was dissatisfied with the preparations of some medicines in common use and made experiments, in particular to obtain a preparation of emetic tartar which would be ‘regular in strength and uniform in operation’.…

Two volumes, containing 7 rare printed works relating to 18th century French art, from the stock of the late antiquarian bookseller Diana Parikian. The first contains six short works on the visual arts in Paris in the 1750s and 1760s, bound together. The second volume is M. Michel, La Peinture: Poëme, Lyon 1767.

The first edition of Humphrey Repton’s An enquiry into the changes of taste in landscape gardening of 1806: Repton was one of the great landscape gardeners of the 18th century, and is often considered the successor to Capability Brown.…

The first (Lot 30) acquired at auction was a Court Baron for Carshalton dating from 1682 to 1833. This volume had been absent from our records for more than fifty years, before they came into our custody, so we were very keen to acquire it.

The Rev. George Armstrong was initially an Anglican clergyman who became an influential Unitarian minister and this collection of his letters is largely unpublished. This makes them valuable for scholars, and, as such, a very exciting acquisition for us.…

In 1903 Anna Muthesius published the influential Das Eigenkleid der Frau, regarded as a seminal text in the development of early twentieth-century dress, and particularly associated with the Artistic Dress movement.…

A copy of the second edition of Dryden’s seminal translation of Virgil. The work had first appeared in 1697, and became perhaps the most frequently cited literary text in the Jacobite community during the 18th century. In format a folio, elegantly ‘adorn’d with a hundred sculptures’, what distinguishes this heavily-used copy is its provenance.…

This edition of Tacitus’s Orationes Omnes, which once belonged to John Keats, is of major importance to scholars. It brings the number of books known to have belonged to Keats to 28.…

This letter was written by Walter Adolphus Dunne, a Sub-Assistant Commissary attached to the 24th Regiment. Dunne was one of the defenders of Rorke’s Drift, and wrote the letter only hours after the battle finished in the early hours of 24 January 1879. It is a vivid document and must be the earliest account of the defence.

Brigid Brophy (1929-1995) was an unconventional and experimental author of fiction and a passionate writer of non-fiction that embraced her strong political, cultural and moral views. She was also a dynamic campaigner on issues ranging from public lending rights for authors to vivisection.

The Letters Patent granted the 'Establishment of a Board Society or Body Corporate for the Encouragement of Agriculture’, is dated 23 August 1793.

A small but varied collection mostly relating to Miss Moyra Goff (1897-1990) and her family, of The Courts, Holt, near Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire. The Courts is an eighteenth-century mansion which was donated to the National Trust, together with its grounds, in 1943.…

A copy of Astesanus de Ast, Summa de Casibus Conscientiae, in a contemporary named binding by Johannes Meigfoge, active in Ellwangen or Tübingen (Baden-Württemberg) in 1475-1513.…

These are two of the first books printed in Scotland which are, together, of great significance for the history of printing in Scotland and for the evidence they contain about the wider cultural context and history of Scotland at this time. The Aberdeen Breviary, printed in 1509-1510, is the book for which printing was introduced to Scotland.…

The collection offers a compelling insight into Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies’ professional and personal life, as well as the performing arts scene of her time. There is correspondence with most of the leading performers and writers, including John Gielgud, Vivien Leigh, Ellen Terry, Edward Gordon Craig, Ian McKellen and Peggy Ashcroft.…

The Chastising of God’s children, composed c.1390, circulated widely amongst a cosmopolitan readership in the late Middle Ages in England, and is a centrally important witness to the growing vernacular appetite in the fourteenth century for advanced spiritual guidance.…

The Coker Court manuscripts consist of the family and estate archives of the Helyar family of East Coker, in south Somerset, and of the Walker, Heneage and Button families of Somerset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.…

This collection of six letters, eleven manuscripts and two books provide unique insight into the close friendship between E. V. Gordon and J. R. R.…

Michael Faraday is best known for his scientific work and teaching undertaken at the Royal Institution from 1812 until his death in 1867.…

This first edition of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne is very finely bound by Robert Riviere with a fore-edge painting of The Plestor, the village square in Selborne, reproduced from one of the original illustrations for the first edition of The Natural History.…

This poll-book, which was owned by Maurice Johnson (founder of the Society) illustrates a most interesting episode in England’s history and further illumates the friendship between Johnson and William Stukeley, Vicar of All Saints’ in Stamford. The 1734 general election took place in the wake of a crisis in Sir Robert Walpole’s administration.…

The archive of the actress Billie Whitelaw relates to her work with Irish writer and Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett. Billie Whitelaw was Beckett's favourite actress. The items join the rest of the University's Beckett Collection, which is the world's largest collection of manuscript materials relating to Beckett.

One of the very first decisions made by the Mitchell Library trustees in 1874 was that the Library should seek to acquire all that it could about Glasgow, and about Robert Burns. The Robert Burns Collection is, therefore, fundamental to the Mitchell Library, and remains at the core of our current collecting policy.…