46 grants for 2019.
This medieval charter dates to the 2nd Earl of Warwick’s incumbency. WCRO were keen to pursue this particular document, not only because of its content, but also because we hold two collections to which this charter relates, the Warwick Castle Collection and the Parish Church of St Mary’s, Warwick.
The following describes the charter:…
This collection was formerly owned by Maureen and Monty Baker-Munton. Maureen had been PA to Daphne’s husband, “Boy” Browning during the Second World War and continued to work for him after, during which time she and Daphne became good friends.…
A newly discovered book from the library of the Cambridge scholar and bibliophile Gabriel Harvey (1552/3–1631), extensively and engagingly annotated throughout, has recently been acquired by Cambridge University Library through the generosity of the Friends of the National Libraries.…
A collection of paper and photographic records relating to the naval and maritime history of Portland which was at one time one of the country’s most important naval bases; a base for the Channel and Home fleets.…
This image of Brunel, in front of the giant chains used to control the launch of the massive SS Great Eastern, was to become one of the most important photographic images of the era, and of Brunel himself - one of the towering geniuses of the Victorian age.…
This album is a unique 'visitors' book' compiled by Percy and Mary Bate between 1903 and 1948, and contains 109 silhouettes of their friends and acquaintances hand-cut from black paper. Sitters’ autographs also accompany the majority of the silhouettes.…
A rare edition of Euclid’s Elements that quite literally stands out from other publications of the text: John Cowley’s Appendix to Euclid’s Elements (1758). His innovative approach enabled readers to fold pop-out three-dimensional figures while they studied Euclid’s text.…
In March 2020 the Britten-Pears Arts purchased the Archive of Lennox Berkeley Papers to form part of the Britten Pears Archive held at the Red House, Benjamin Britten’s home in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.
This is a fascinating collection of documents covering a century of Westmorland Parliamentary Elections. The archive consists of 175 items: broadsides, leaflets and pamphlets, covering the period from 1818-1910 with significant collections from the 1826 and 1843 elections.…
The letter is part of a sequence of correspondence with Hayley, written from Cowper’s house at Weston Underwood near Olney. Cowper was then sixty. In March 1792 Hayley wrote to introduce himself. Both men had been commissioned by rival publishers to work on John Milton.…
The Royal College of Music has a very close link to Sir Hubert Parry. He was appointed to teach at the college at its foundation in 1882 and in 1895 he succeeded Sir George Grove as our second Director.…
A small group of letters of the artist, engraver and poet David Jones (1895-1974) to his friend Morag Owen (née McLennan), together with some related papers.…
In 2019 the Kent History and Library Centre was awarded a grant to acquire two contrasting items.…
The grant of the manor of Smewyns was made by the Crown to Sir John Norreys on 1 August 1558. It is written in ink on a single membrane of parchment and measures 475mm high by 687mm wide. The initial portrait letter shows Philip and Mary enthroned while there is additional decoration within and above a majuscule first line.…
Dickson, Archer & Thorp, solicitors, of Alnwick, Northumberland. The practice was established in the late 18th century and continued until the death of the last managing partner in 2005. At this point there existed an unbroken series of business records and clients’ papers dating back to its establishment, making the collection a unique resource.…
Winchester has a special connection with John Keats, who spent two months in the city in the summer and autumn of 1819. He arrived in early August from the Isle of Wight, reporting to a friend in London, ‘We removed to Winchester for the convenience of a Library and find it an exceeding pleasant Town’.
Jenny Lane (1835-?) was the eldest daughter of George Lane, a market gardener in Pulborough, Sussex. She married twice, firstly to George Collins and then in 1885 to William Norton Western. In her younger years, Jenny was lady’s maid to Lucy Renshaw, travelling companion of Amelia A. B. Edwards.…
This exceptionally rare book of Orthodox liturgy and theology in Old Church Slavonic is an exciting addition to the collection of early Slavonic books found across collegiate Cambridge.…
These three letters from Richard Cobden to François Barthélemy Arlès-Dufour provide an important insight into both Cobden’s political views and his family life 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.…
An important series of letters which add detail and colour to the life and times of a significant British writer, in whom there is a resurgence of interest by academic and other researchers. Townsend Warner spent the greater part of her life in rural Dorset with her same-sex partner Valentine Ackland.…
No sooner had we collected John Pattenden’s survey from Stowmarket than we were alerted to the appearance on eBay of another 17th-century map.
This map shows a sizeable Wealden estate consisting of a substantial yeoman’s house with two barns, agricultural buildings, an extensive orchard in three sections and 180 acres of land and woods, their names and acreages indicated in each parcel.…
In childhood, Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) and her siblings created a rich imaginary world, sparked by a set of toy soldiers given to Branwell by their father, and chronicled in tiny handwritten books.…
On 18th May 2019, a rare copy of the seminal publication Mirskontsa [Worldbackwards] was offered at auction at Nosbüsch & Stucke auction house in Berlin. Published in Moscow in November 1912 by G.L. Kuz’min and S.D.
George Murray Levick served as surgeon and zoologist on the Terra Nova Expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott which saw Levick spending the austral summer of 1911-12 at Cape Adare where he studied an Adélie penguin rookery.…
The South West Heritage Trust is grateful for the support of the Friends of the National Libraries which has enabled us to reunite these papers with the main Helyar archive which is held at the Somerset Heritage Centre. The papers were mounted, in a broadly chronological order, in three folio volumes by Theodora Helyar during the 19th century.…
In the latter part of the year 2019 the Cornwall Archives and Cornish Studies Service (Kresen Kernow) was offered, by private treaty, a number of archival items relating to the Cornish estate of the Earl of Kimberley in the Falmouth area. These consisted of:
The deed relating to the Sharington family of Lacock Abbey is an important acquisition for us and is now reunited with the Lacock Archive, which was also purchased with the support of Friends of the National Libraries. With other documents in the archive it enhances our understanding of the family’s history and the development of the estate.…
Somerville College is the home of John Stuart Mill’s London library, comprising around 1,700 volumes belonging to him and his father, James Mill.…
The Chippendale Society is extremely grateful for the support of the Friends of the National Libraries, which has enabled it to add a group of previously unknown drawings to its collection. They were discovered in a collection of architectural drawings bearing the bookplate of Alexander Manning (1819-1903).…
Thanks to the generosity of the Friends of National Libraries, the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) was able to obtain a number of drawings relating to the construction of Tower Bridge at auction.
An internationally significant literary archive of the British-born expressionist artist Barrie Cooke (1931-2014), fisherman and friend of poets, and an associated collection of 150 images he made in response to their work. Cooke moved to Ireland in 1954, and the archive represents an extraordinary record of creative collaboration.…
The archive forms a key source for British and international history in the 18th -20th centuries, and is closely related to manuscripts and archives in the Bodleian, particularly the extensive political collections.…
A substantial family archive relating to the Glasgow produce broker William Davidson (1861-1945). Davidson is well known as the client for whom Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) designed Windyhill, and he remained a loyal friend and supporter throughout Mackintosh’s life.…
This rich and extensive archive documents the lives of four generations of a family who held positions of influence locally, nationally and across the British Empire and beyond. These include a Rear Admiral, an Admiral of the Fleet, a Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies and a Governor of Queensland.…
During the final 18 years of his life, Gilbert Goudie (1843-1918), a banker in Edinburgh and native of Shetland, composed a series of autobiographical journals, covering his whole life to date. In 2016 the Shetland Archives acquired the series, and the diaries on which they were based, from Goudie’s descendants.…
This worn Penguin paperback provides a fascinating insight into legal and publishing history in this country. It paved the way for social reform far beyond D. H. Lawrence’s colourful text.…
‘The Lyghfield Bible’, illuminated manuscript on vellum, late 13th century.…
Dr Alexander Lock, Curator of Modern Archives and Manuscripts, writes: John Donne (1572–1631) was one of the most popular poets of the late 16th and early 17th centuries and is considered to be one of the greatest Renaissance writers in the English canon.
Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) is one of the most influential scientists of the 19th century and for geology one of the most distinguished and important figures of all time.…
This remarkable resource comprises 265 book illustrations (from volumes including Imperial Rome, Prehistoric Britain, Norman Britain and illustrations for an edition of the Holy Bible), 195 working drawings,102 sketches, 38 sketchbooks, 34 diaries and 80 letters.…
Greenock is often seen as a post-industrial town in decline and is overshadowed by its neighbour, Glasgow. These acquisitions help us explore the literary and artistic side of 19th-century Greenock in an attempt to show this unexplored history.…
A full purchase grant from FNL has secured for us a really fine copy of the 1929 first edition of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, with line engravings by David Jones.…
Comprising 17 boxes and 182 framed items together with some loose papers, the archive includes Peake’s illustrations for classic works of literature including Treasure Island, Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm, The Hunting of the Snark and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, as well as illustrations for his own novels (including Gormenghast), children’s boo…
The Whitehouse Ruskin Collection. Bought with the aid of a grant of £35,000 from Friends of the National Libraries. FNL also worked with the Ruskin Library and secured £25,000 from the Aldama Foundation and £256,000 from the Garfield Weston Foundation, both grants becoming unconditional in 2019.
This book arose from a trip the Scottish photographer James Craig Annan (1864-1946) made to northern Italy in 1894, in the company of the artist David Young Cameron. The photographs he took during this trip are regarded as some of his finest.…
