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Beautiful presentation volume by an infatuated Oxford undergraduate (shortly afterwards President of the Union) following his cousin’s winter wedding at the British Ambassador’s Residence in Paris. Small oblong volume with matching slipcase (13.5x11.5cm) The manuscript book has olive green printed paper overlay, the upper cover with a hand-coloured… Read more…

A letter sent on behalf of Thomas Chippendale that fills in a gap in the known sequence of correspondence between the master cabinet maker and one of his most important clients, Sir Rowland Winn, of Nostell Priory. Bifolium on ‘L V Gerrevink’ watermarked paper. Conjugate address leaf ‘To Sir Rowland Winn Bar[one]t at Nostell near Pontefract Yorkshi… Read more…

Undergraduate photo album recording life at Newnham College from 1920-1923 with an emphasis on hockey and rowing as well as the visit of Crown Prince Hirohito to Cambridge in 1921. Oatmeal cloth binding (24x19.5cm); bookseller’s ticket to the front pastedown, ‘The Ancient House Bookshop and Library, Ipswich’; 38 greenish-grey card leaves with 288 p… Read more…

Mr Justice Edmund Lushington’s court-room notes on the trial of a Manchester baker, Elizabeth Dewhurst, for passing forged banknotes - a crime that would subsequently result in her transportation to Botany Bay. Small notebook, attractively bound in roan (94x168mm), hinged along the short side. On the front pastedown is written: ‘E H Lushington Marc… Read more…

Attractive woman’s sketchbook recording a trip made in the summers of the 1860s from Cannes to the Channel Islands and on to England. Textured green cloth binding (23x13cm) Furness’s name on the front paste-down with another name added: ‘Mrs Ellis Lucerne Swiss’ - perhaps Amelia’s married name? The drawings and watercolours are on thick paper of se… Read more…

An 18th century country clergyman’s narrative of hypochondria, illness and death: Jackson’s life-writing being continued and completed decades after his death by his sons. Small quarto (17x20cm) bound in full contemporary sheepskin, rebacked; new endpapers and a few paper repairs. In addition to the manuscript book there are several inserts includi… Read more…

Oblong sketchbook bound in black roan (26x17cm) with ‘C H Springer’ in gilt lettering to the upper cover; rubbing to extremities. All edges gilt; marbled endpapers. An unfinished pencil sketch precedes a sequence of 32 drawings, mostly in pen and ink wash, many with hand-drawn frames and clearly taken from a variety of sources, a few drawn from lif… Read more…

Two page letter arguing for the creation of a sort of freeport on Grand Turk in the West Indies in order to permit trade in ‘Flour, Fish, Lumber, Provisions of all sorts and British Manufactured Goods’ even if carried by ‘French and Spanish Craft from their respective colonies.’ Double sided letter on a single sheet of paper with old folds; horizon… Read more…

Commonwealth period Manorial Court Book for the district of ‘Sutton Outsoken’ in central Norfolk detailing fines against manorial custom as well as transfers of copyhold property. Small folio size manuscript bound in a reused vellum indenture from 1623. Manuscript title to front cover: ‘1650 usqe 1660’ - 1650 up to 1660 - with the letter ‘D’ below.… Read more…

Unrecorded auction catalogue for the ‘stock in trade’ - sherry, port, ‘coniac brandy’, rum and gin - from a recently deceased St Albans wine merchant, annotated by the auctioneer with the prices achieved. The printed catalogue is octavo size (21x13cm), made up of two bifolia loosely inserted to make 8 printed pages. There is soiling to the outer le… Read more…

Napoleonic War manuscript ship’s log for a British warship in the Mediterranean that would be used shortly afterwards to transport convicts to New South Wales (1819) and Van Diemen’s Land (1821) in Australia. The folio-sized ship’s log comprises two disbound sections of a notebook of a junior British naval officer’s training logbook from 1814. Manu… Read more…

Remarkably extensive Eliott Kastner archive of the production of Pierce Brosnan’s first leading role in which he played a French anthropologist in New York who discovers a group of urban nomads who are not who they seem. The pile of documents sits 10 inches thick and comprises, in brief: Production - Central Files Kastner: Chain of Title original a… Read more…

Autobiographical manuscript of the Anglo-French painter Theodore Roussel’s early life from 1847 to the 1880s which cites his most famous work, The Reading Girl (Tate Britain), together with several sketches, an etching, autograph letter and a manuscript draft of the painter’s will. Roussel (Theodore, 1847-1926) was a French-born English Painter and… Read more…

Presentation volume inscribed by a distinguished roster of 1000 scientists and officials of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research as a retirement present for its founder. Expensively bound with Frank Heath’s initials on the upper cover, all edges gilt, manuscript title page and 50 card leaves. Vellum-bound list of signers in rear poc… Read more…

Rededicated - and perhaps presented - to King Charles II by the author’s nephew, a manuscript meditation on Psalm 101, unpublished in this form and written as an antidote against the plague. Small quarto (horizontal chainlines & foolscap watermark) bound in contemporary calf with raised bands to the spine and gilt decoration. Three blank endpapers… Read more…

Portfolio of signed comic and erotic sketches by a Nebraskan born artist, apparently compiled while in New York City. The sketches are housed in an ‘Anchor Clasp Envelope’ on which Anderson has written ‘Rough Sketches C.W. Anderson 41 Wash[ington’ Sq[uare] New York City.’ Old repairs to edges of the envelope. Anderson’s drawings are on thin paper (… Read more…

Lovingly preserved letters sent by an adoring young Yorkshire Curate to his beloved fiance Elizabeth Musson in rural Lincolnshire. Between 1865 and the end of 1866 Joseph Foster sent his ‘Bet’ (presumably Betsy, or Elizabeth) 93 letters which she has gathered together and sewn into a borrowed vellum binding (and clasp) using pink legal ties. The bi… Read more…

Manuscript copy by the Pennsylvania Quaker Susan Lukens of the 1719 Book of Discipline ‘From our yearly meeting at Philadelphia, for Pennsylvania and the Jerseys...’ PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION Small notebook, green cloth spine over marbled boards, rubbed to edges, slight loss to cloth at tail of spine. A dedication in the hand of the manuscript’s author… Read more…

A remarkable manuscript (c200,000 words) that begins in London just before the 1688 Revolution and charts its author’s return to his Cornish village where he pleads for the right to remain in communion with both ‘Episcopal and Presbiterial’ congregations. Over 300 pages the manuscript plots Rowse’s efforts to assuage both conscience and Cornish nei… Read more…

Three manuscript Letter Books (1704-1708) kept by a Franco-British double agent in London which record his efforts to lead a British invasion and his charismatic hold over British and European monarchs and ministers - worthy of a full Hollywood treatment. Antoine de Guiscard’s meteoric rise was followed by an equally precipitous fall from grace whi… Read more…

Manuscript translation by an English lawyer determined to inject his enthusiasm for Lucretius into this work by a 17th century Swiss natural philosopher - completing his English makeover with marginal references to Milton’s Paradise Lost. PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Quarto in modern half tan calf over marbled boards; an eighteenth century presentation in… Read more…

Late medieval Book of Hours written and illuminated for a woman patron who is depicted in a double-page of miniatures kneeling before the Virgin Mary to receive the gift of this manuscript. This Book of Hours was made in a northern French workshop of the second half of the fifteenth century, perhaps Rouen or Paris. It has attractive female provenan… Read more…

Autograph note to novelist Andre Maurois who translated Mrs Dalloway into French and wrote an essay on Woolf that introduced her work to the Francophone world. Woolf writes on a small blue, oblong sheet of ‘Strathdon’ watermarked paper on 14th June 1932. She states that she has seen Cory Bell (older brother of her sister Vanessa Bell’s husband the… Read more…

Alexander Todd’s personal archive including school prizes from Glasgow schooldays, his Nobel Prize lecture and dozens of retained copies of his papers and speeches. Alexander R Todd (1907-1997) was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the synthesis of nucleotides - the groundwork for Watson and Crick’s elucidation of DNA. Born… Read more…

[RESERVED] Pre-printed diary used interestingly by a member of Earl Haig’s family as a commonplace/ day book. Chunky small quarto bound in full calf, splitting slighly at outer hinges but very robust still. Laid in is a selection of quotations from Carlyle written on ‘Ramornie Ladybank’ headed paper. Marbled endpapers. Preceding the diary pages are… Read more…