34 grants for 2015.
Letter from President of the Royal Society, Joseph Banks to Astronomer William Herschel, praising the efficiency of his telescopes and offering him a pair of his old shoes.…
This 15th-century Latin manuscript Psalter (with some added German vernacular prayers) from the convent of Medingen is a new addition to the corpus of surviving manuscripts from the Cistercian convent of Medingen in Lower Saxony, and joins the two examples (an Easter prayer book and a Manual for the Provost) already in the Bodleian.
Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) was one Britain’s most influential garden designers. This unique album of platinum prints dates from between 1885 and 1886. Jekyll took up photography, probably under the tutelage of her brother, Sir Herbert, in 1885, developing a special interest in recording English vernacular architecture and rural traditions.…
This archive of Virginia Woolf material was gathered by Brownlee Kirkpatrick (1919-2007), the bibliographer of Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Edmund Blunden and Katherine Mansfield. The first edition of her Bibliography of Virginia Woolf was published in 1957.…
This manuscript contains the earliest known translation into English of any work by the great humanist scholar and reformer, Desiderius Erasmus (d.1536).…
This is an ‘office copy’ of the letter, written by one of Locke’s amanuenses, Locke being careful to keep a record of both sides of his correspondence.…
A rare first edition of Albertus Magnus’ De meteoris, printed in Venice by Reynaldus de Novimagio, 24 May 1488, a folio of 98 leaves with seven woodcut diagrams.…
Minnie Burton married her second husband in 1914, the British archaeologist and photographer Harry Burton (1879-1940), whom she accompanied on all his travels.…
The Jabberwock was a literary journal at the University of Edinburgh in the 1940s and 1950s, at a key moment in the Scottish literary renaissance. This collection, compiled by the editor Ian Holroyd, includes manuscript work submitted by numerous literary figures and important correspondence.…
The Muriel Spark archive is one of the largest held by the National Library of Scotland. Dame Muriel held onto almost everything on paper, so readers and researchers to delve into the collection, mining its abundant riches for new perspectives and a deeper understanding of one of Scotland's literary greats.…
This is Magdalen College Library's most significant purchase in recent decades, a volume containing all the major works of the English lutenist and composer John Dowland (1563?–1626).…
This important record of the Pre-Raphaelite artists has remained with May Gaskell’s descendants, consists of more than 200 letters dating from 1892 up to the year of Burne-Jones’s death: three albums of intimate letters from the artist to Mrs Gaskell; two albums of illustrated letters to Mrs Gaskell and her daughter, Daphne; and other ephemera such…
These two letters from Richard Cobden to Charles Pelham Villiers (1843) and Michael Corr Van der Maeren (1856) provide an important insight into Cobden’s political views and will be of great interest to 19th century political historians, particularly when viewed in conjunction with the Cobden Archive held by West Sussex Record Office.…
Thomas Thirlby (circa 1500-1570) was the one of the last generation of Tudor bishops who were also diplomats in the service of the state.…
A rare and poignant autograph letter written by Austen's sister, Cassandra, in the days following the author's death. The letter is addressed to Fanny Knight, the eldest child of Cassandra’s brother Edward.…
Queen Mab, Shelley’s first major published poem, is part fairy tale, part political treatise, and totally enthralling. This is a first (and extremely rare) edition of this work, printed for Thomas Hookham in 1813.…
One of the sets of the presentation issue of the official descriptive and illustrated catalogue of The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, from 1851, had become available on the market.…
An early twentieth-century edition of ‘The Romaunt of the Rose’ by Geoffrey Chaucer. This publication was the first book printed by the Florence Press, an imprint of Chatto and Windus, intended to compete with private presses by producing books of similar style and beauty.…
The silver seal-die of the Providence Island Company, an English chartered company founded in 1630 to establish a colony on Providence Islands (Nicaragua). The seal was made in London around 1630.…
William succeeded his father Charles, 9th baron Stourton who died on 7 May 1633, and almost immediately appointed William Hussey and Robert Biflete as stewards to carry out the survey, which was completed in the following year.…
This survey, illustrated with maps, was made for Thomas Lennard, Lord Dacre, by Samuel Crouch. The tenements are described on the left-hand pages and on the facing pages are coloured maps which show buildings, acreages, some fieldnames, the names of neighbouring owners and roads.…
This volume provides a full survey of the estates of William Richardson in 1774, including a perambulation of the Manors of Rogate Bohunt and Clarks Dean. It records the acreage and cultivation of his lands and includes a fold-out map providing a detailed depiction of the properties and boundaries described in the survey.
The letter is a testimonial of Georgiana Morson, a matron at Urania Cottage, the home for 'fallen women' that Dickens established with the wealthy philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts.…
Hugo Williams’ archive consists of the manuscripts of all his writing in poetry and prose: twelve volumes of poetry, two travel books and his journalism for the ‘Freelance’ column in The Times Literary Supplement. What makes it so special is its completeness.…
John William Dunne is an intriguing and underappreciated figure in British history. Unusually, he achieved distinction in his day both as an aeronautical designer and pioneer and then later as an author and philosopher. He began his career as an army officer, serving in the Boer War.…
One of only twelve manuscript missals for York use known to survive, and the only one left in private hands. It was written and illuminated in the early 15th century, although where it was actually made remains to be established.…
The records relate to the North Yorkshire estates of the family at Norton Conyers and Nunnington and there are also papers from estates at Kippax, West Yorkshire and Bowland, Lancashire. The archive is therefore significant for the history of both North & West Yorkshire.…
The Harrison & Seel archive consists of photographs, drawings, sketchbooks and miscellaneous items (press cuttings, magazines, copies of the official guide and other paper documents, as well as four mid-18th century hand-coloured engravings of Vauxhall & Ranelagh Gardens that the architects used as a source of inspiration).…
Thomas Manning was among the first European lay scholars of Chinese language and culture, and one of the earliest sinologists from the British Isles. He was the first Englishman to visit Lhasa, which he reached in 1811, and where he met the child Dalai Lama.…
Oliver Messel (1904-1978) was an English artist and one of the foremost stage designers of the 20th century. He was born into a creative family of wealthy bankers and the family home, Nymans, was a great influence throughout his life. Messel left Eton early to study at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he became friends with Rex Whistler.…
Rupert Brooke died on the eve of the battle of Gallipoli. His personal papers were divided between his mother and his friend Sir Edward Marsh. In 1930 Mrs Brooke bequeathed hers to his old Cambridge college, King’s College.…
This medieval manuscript written in Scotland and used by the monastic community of Sweetheart Abbey, a few miles south of Dumfries, in the later Middle Ages. Sweetheart Abbey was a Cistercian monastery founded in circa 1273 by Dervorgilla de Balliol, mother of the Scottish king John Balliol.…
This was the last book of poems Lawrence saw published in his lifetime. The typescript sheds further light on Lawrence’s battle with the British censors in the wake of the controversy surrounding the private printing and postal distribution of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1928.…
The volume was described thus in the sale catalogue: 'Donne, John. XXVI Sermons. London. 1661. Contemporary calf, rebacked. Folio (11 1/8 x 7 in.; 283 x 178 mm). Woodcut printer's device on title-page, woodcut headpiece, initials, and initial-frame. Provenance: Thomas Middleton (near contemporary signature on title-page); R. E.…