36 grants for 2017.
Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) is well known for his illustrated books British Birds and Quadrupeds, but in his work as a professional engraver over a 50-year period he produced a wide range of material – book illustrations, bookplates and newspaper advertisements, as well as engraved silver, clock-faces etc.…
John Napier, of Merchiston (1550-1617), A Plaine Discovery of the whole Revelation of Saint Iohn: set downe in two treatises. Edinburgh: printed by Robert Walde-grave, printer to the Kings Majestie. 1593; and James VI, King of Scotland, 15 in forme of ane sermone.
‘Sold to the Griffith Institute!’: on 9 May 2017 the Griffith Institute acquired at auction at Sotheby’ an album of watercolours, drawings and tracings of Egypt by George Lloyd.
Cambridge University Library is very grateful for the grant from the Friends of the National Libraries which enabled us to acquire this very rare illustrated anatomy by the French royal surgeon Ambroise Paré (1510?–1590).…
The material auctioned at Bonhams is probably the most significant collection relating to Marc Brunel ever to come on the market. Marc Brunel was a creative and innovative engineer who had a significant impact on the nineteenth century.…
This is a collection of pre-eminent importance. Many of the drawings are by Chief Engineer Marc Isambard Brunel himself, by his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Resident Engineer, and by Richard Beamish, Assistant Engineer. Some are by Joseph Pinchback, the Tunnel’s chief mechanical draftsman, but all are exquisitely drawn in great detail.
The Batten family have acted as solicitors in Yeovil since the early 18th century. Their house in Church Street played a central part in the legal history of the town, serving as the Town Courts until the 20th century.…
David Almond is one of the most celebrated British writers for children of recent decades. His first novel Skellig (1998) achieved the rare distinction of winning both the Whitbread Children’s Book award and the prestigious Carnegie medal.…
Pusey House is home to the principal Anglo-Catholic library and archive in the UK. The House was founded in 1884 as a monument to the life and work of Dr Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University and Canon of Christ Church Cathedral.…
This diary is written over the course of a year - beginning Sunday, January 4th and ending Thursday, December 31st 1846.…
A collection of 11 late medieval deeds (1427 to 1574) from Coggeshall. Formerly unknown to historians, the deeds appeared for sale at Sotheby’s on 23 May at an estimate of £3,000 to £5,000 which no doubt reflected the presence in the deeds of members of the Paycocke family, relatives of the famous clothier Thomas Paycocke of Coggeshall (d.…
The Magna Carta has been called ‘a sacred text, the nearest approach to an irrepealable "fundamental statute" that England has ever had’ (Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law), and is the most celebrated legal document in the English-speaking world.…
Before purchasing this book we had no books from the Library of George Folbury/Fowlbery (d. 1540), who was Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, 1537-1540. The book’s provenance comes from Folbury’s ink inscription on the title ‘Su[m] liber G. folberij’ and signature ‘G. folberi’ below the publisher’s device on the final page.…
Charles William Vane-Stewart, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, (1778-1854) was a British soldier and politician, and half-brother to Lord Castlereagh. He had a highly distinguished career.…
This is one of the last known volumes from the library of John Donne in private hands with the support of the Friends of the National Libraries. It is a copy of Adam Blackwood’s Adversus Georgii Buchanani dialogum, de iure regni apud scotos, printed in Poitiers by François Le Page in 1581.…
The collection contains 71 lantern slides showing the construction of the lighthouse, from the building of a coffer-dam to retain the sea to the lighthouse-keeper relaxing in his new quarters. The name of the photographer is not known, but it was probably the designer and builder Sir Thomas Matthews (1849-1930).…
Lord Byron’s copy of the first Barnes Latin edition of the Poems of Anacreon (Cambridge, 1705) was given as a gift and inscribed to him by Leigh Hunt.
Richard Greville Thonger (b.1861) was working as a pharmacist in Birmingham in the spring of 1882 when he attended a meeting at The Salvation Army’s Regent Hall on London’s Oxford Street, where ‘the Spirit of God took hold of my soul’ and he immediately joined The Salvation Army.
Martin Parr is a British photographer, photo-journalist, artist and curator with an international reputation. Over five decades his radical approach to social documentary photography has made a substantial contribution to photographic expression in the UK and beyond.
The British Library has been offered the opportunity to purchase the Mostyn Psalter-Hours. The manuscript is a late thirteenth-century Psalter-Hours produced in London in the ambit of Edward I’s court (r. 1272-1307). As a Psalter that can be securely located to London, the national heritage value of the manuscript is high.
The original 16-folio manuscript of Handel’s vocal trio, Se tu non lasci Amore, HWV 201a, scored for two sopranos, bass and continuo, and written in July 1708 shortly after Handel’s arrival in Naples. This manuscript is the only autograph version of this ‘Terzetto’.
With the generous assistance of the Friends of the National Libraries, the National Gallery Research Centre has been able to acquire a small but significant collection of papers relating to the sale of the art collection of the Duc de Berry.…
This plan's provenance strongly suggested that it was a preliminary design by Ignatius Bonomi for the Durham Assize Courts and Durham Gaol, which would date it to around 1811. Although later plans of the prison and courts survive in our collection, these date from the mid-19th century onwards.…
Drawn in 1664 by Robert Whi(s)tpaine from a survey of 1659 by Ralph Dowcett, the plan shows a farm in ‘Tollesbury’ (recte Tolleshunt D’Arcy) owned by the Henry Smith Charity.…
The Civil Service Lifeboat Fund was founded in 1866, one of the founders being Charles Dibdin, a Civil Servant in the General Post Office who, in 1885, left to become Secretary of the RNLI.
Ada Clarke was the younger sister of D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), the Nottinghamshire writer who was also a student of the University College of Nottingham, the predecessor of the University of Nottingham. The collection was the last major cache of DH Lawrence papers still in private ownership.…
This extensive collection of family papers is comprised of a wide range of correspondence, photographs, drawings, prints and marriage documents, and is an important adjunct to the papers of Edith Somerville already held in the Special Collections Library at Queen’s.…
One of the most important documents for the history of Ludlow Castle to emerge in recent times, this heraldic roll appeared in Portobello Road, and, through the good offices of Mr Hugh Wood, a local heraldic expert, was acquired for the Friends of Ludlow Museum.…
The soke of Conisbrough was no single-village manor; centred upon its celebrated chief messuage Conisbrough Castle (notable for its place in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe), this was a franchise initially made up of thirty townships scattered across the southern reaches of the West Riding.…
This large collection of mountaineering and climbing books is from the estate of Nat Allen, a founder member of the Rock and Ice climbing club. Amongst the collection are a scrapbook and selection of black and white photographs and 35mm slides.
This comprises two works: The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.…
Formerly displayed in the bar of a public house in the Cotswolds, this parchment pedigree of a prominent Welsh Elizabethan merchant was purchased privately by the National Library of Wales in March 2017, with the aid of a grant of £7,500 from the Friends of the National Libraries.
The treatise is written in a single neat hand, laid out as if to be ready for the press and preceded by a spiritual autobiography, which identifies the author as ‘an Obedient Daughter and true Member of the Church of England’ and mentions her contacts with the three ‘eminent Divines’, Dr Thomas Soame, Dr Jerem
Peterhouse acquired two lots at auction that derive from the collection of literary manuscripts assembled by Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton (1809-1885), many of whose papers are now held by Trinity College, Cambridge.…
Vivien Leigh is one of the most important film and stage performers of the 20th century and her profile attracts on-going visitor and global media interest. The V&A acquired Vivien Leigh’s archive in 2013 and has established itself as being the repository of related material.
Ben Jonson, Workes, 2nd edn., 1640, vol. 1, with extensive near-contemporary manuscript annotations to the play, Epicoene or The Silent Woman.…
