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Manuscript Antiphonary containing beautifully written liturgical chants for use during winter months in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Troyes in Northern France. Octavo sized manuscript (13x19cm) bound in contemporary full calf with faded gilt decoration to the spine and a pleasingly vernacular repair long since effected by a wraparound piece of lea… 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…

18th century manuscript record of land rentals on the Dunlop family estates in East Ayrshire. Slim vellum-bound notebook with wallet-style binding and external straps. Later gilt lettering on spine suggesting a strong motivation to preserve the manuscript. Laid paper with horizontal chainlines; 20 pages of manuscript headed pages, beginning ‘Rental… Read more…

[RESERVED] Vastly ambitious spiritual commonplace book by a Scottish Congregationalist, Shakespeare fan, and cousin of the Glaswegian Presbyterian preacher Ralph Wardlaw. Octavo sized volume, rebacked in half calf over green paper covered boards; paper lining to inner hinges. 2 blanks precede a 10 page list of Contents; 12 blanks then 322 pages of… Read more…

[RESERVED] Long, provocative letter to a fellow Edinburgh University student by the brilliant scientist and polymath Thomas Young about his decision to abandon his Quaker principles for play-going, ‘Scotch music’, dancing in St Andrews and the company of ‘beautiful and accomplished’ women. Quarto-sized bifolium with conjugate address leaf to ‘John… Read more…

Five Volumes of the diaries of Thomas Henry Montgomery of Stobo in the Scottish Borders, including a Middle Eastern tour. The future Captain Thomas Henry Montgomery of Stobo’s used 5 bound volumes of Punch’s Pocket Book to keep his diary over 15 years: 1848-49-50; 1851-52-53; 1854-55-56; 1857-58-59; 1860-61-62. All volumes are fat little octavos; 1… Read more…

[RESERVED] Personal itinerary of the first trip to Scotland made by a British monarch in nearly 2 centuries, from a secret British government messenger travelling with George IV and the Home Secretary, Robert Peel. Small quarto (16.5x20.5cm) covering the quarter century 1795-1822 bound in vellum over boards with the single word ‘Home’ - for Home Of… Read more…

A substantial archive - c600 items - of Henry Williamson’s incoming letters and his replies in the form of notes, typescripts and annotated letters relating to his creative work in the 1950s and 1960s, in particular his extended sequence of novels about his experience in the First World War. Among the collection is a fan letter from Len Deighton an… Read more…

Diaries kept by one or possibly two clerics, perhaps a father and son in different denominations, between 1897 and 1936. 3 volumes (16cm x 14cm) two half red roan and one black, over green watered silk with gilt lettering to the front boards of 2 volumes; marbled edges, 2 volumes in very good condition, the third missing its backstrip and with its… Read more…

Manuscript copy written by the Pennsylvania Quaker writer Susan Lukens of the 1719 Book of Discipline ‘From our yearly meeting at Philadelphia, for Pennsylvania and the Jerseys...’ 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 appear… Read more…

The product of an intensely cultured family, this is an exceptionally beautiful visual memoir of two European tours compiled by the artist Ellen Brooker Beale, her sister the portraitist and writer Sarah Sophia Beale together with Ellen Beale’s husband the writer and antiquarian William Watkiss Llloyd. Large bespoke oblong folio album (40x32x7cm sp… Read more…

Autograph musical manuscript (with editorial annotations) by Dylan Thomas’s lifelong friend Daniel Jones which were reproduced in exact facsimile in the first edition of Under Milk Wood. Eight pages of manuscript score in the hand of Daniel Jones contained within a large manila envelope with the typed reference number from the Dent publishing archi… Read more…

Attested 1603 manuscript copies by the Council of the North of Elizabeth I’s Great Charter to Newcastle from 1599 together with two further decrees relating to Newcastle Manuscript signed off by the Council’s Secretary John Ferne and Newcastle’s Mayor in 1603. Quarto manuscript (26cmx19cm) bound in late seventeenth century calf, rebacked in the 20t… Read more…

Diaries of an elite Downing Street secretary or ‘Garden Room Girl’ who served in Whitehall under Winston Churchill and worked at No 10 under Clement Attlee, 1945-1946. Two small diaries. 1. Lorimer’s Ruby Diary, inscribed on the cover ‘B.Crisp 1940’ and on the flyleaf: ‘Belinda Crisp If found please return without turning this page over’, mostly pe… Read more…

Two cross-written manuscript letters penned in October 1845, to Edward Ward Esquire, Royal Engineers, Bermuda, one from his sister Henrietta, the second from Fanny Ward, both living at 114, Champs Elysees, Paris. Each letter is 9 ⅞ x 15 inches (approx 25 x 38 cm), written on both sides, bearing both red postage payment stamps and blue ‘St. James St… Read more…

A remarkable group of notebooks recording in detail the work of a British midwife in the inter-war period. Documenting the births of over 1,000 children in the years 1921-1935. Six record books, oblong octavo (20 x 13cm), each bound in full cloth over stiff card boards with printed title label completed in manuscript to each upper board. Five of th… Read more…

Presentation album to the the first person ever employed by Sir John Reith at the British Broadcasting Company - later the BBC - Reginald ‘Rex’ Palmer (1896-1972) the ‘Golden Voice of Wireless’ who left the BBC in 1929 for the Gramophone Company- as marked by this gift. Small black straight grain morocco binding, carefully repaired, with reinforcem… Read more…

Signed by 68 Governors of this Manchester juvenile reform charity from 1876-1928. Green roan folio, minor scuffing to extremities. Binder’s ticket of William Harris, Cannon Street, Manchester to the front pastedown. Charity Commission printed appointment of governors (pp8) precedes the 68 printed pages of governor-signed pages by the likes of Herbe… Read more…

Autograph manuscript, typescript, corrected proofs and supportive letters from Sir John Betjeman to the author of this memoir of Papa Stour who met her during a visit to the island and helped see the book through to publication. Stella Shepherd and her husband Dennis who illustrated her book moved to Papa Stour in the Shetlands in 1962, to become,… Read more…

Manuscript Visitors’ Book covering nearly 40 years of the life of Juliette and Julian Huxley - ‘Student and lover of nature, inheritor of agnostics, brother of Aldous, believer in evolution by natural selection, and (his own invention) evolutionary humanism’ (Alison Bashford, The Huxleys, 2022). Large quarto size book (28x27cm) bound in quarter oat… 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…

Late 17th century French legal manuscript relating to the affairs of Nicolas de Montargon, businessman and frustrated diplomat. Quarto sized (20x27 cm) disbound manuscript (c 12,000 words) in a clerk’s hand; ink on vellum comprising sixty numbered folios (120pp) in eight gatherings, sewn with string top and bottom only, sewing snapped between third… Read more…

Official record of the commissioning and fund raising for Halifax’s memorial to the last war of the 19th century. Minute book bound in quarter leather binding in very good condition with rubbing to edges and top and tail of spine. Marbled end papers and all edges. This offers a manuscript record of the proceedings of the committee for the soldiers’… Read more…

Working notebook containing letters and photographs compiled by the writer Francesca Claremont for her full length biography of Catherine of Aragon, published in 1939 by Robert Hale. Quarto sized notebook (22.5 × 17cm) containing about 100 pages of postcards, handwritten notes, and expert correspondence about Henry VIII’s first queen. Chipping to t… Read more…