Research > Notable Acquisitions 2002-2003

• Manuscript Materials
• Printed Materials
• Graphic Materials

Manuscript Materials

Walpole, Horace to Catharine Macaulay, 30 March 1773.

In this letter Walpole takes pleasure in sending the "Hentzner" [presumably Hentzner's Journey into England, 1598] ("…It is a singular pleasure to me to have any opportunity of marking the great Esteem I have for your excellent Character & Abilities…") and devotes the rest of the letter to a discussion of Barillon's remarks on "our heroic Martyr", Algernon Sidney.  Walpole was a great admirer of Mrs. Macaulay, the pioneer feminist, supporter of American independence, and author, dubbing her “Dame Thucydides” and claiming that she "exerted manly strength with the gravity of a philosopher"; only one other letter from him to her appears to be known, and none is included in the Yale Correspondence.

An estate inventory with 480 separate items listed room by room and including condition reports (“broke & whole,” “broke & different,” “damp & dirty”).  The bookseller suggests the house whose contents it documents was in Stockton County, Durham. 

Horace Walpole’s copy with his annotations.  

Angelo, born (in Leghorn) Domenico Angelo Malevolti Tremamondo, moved from Paris to London in the 1750s, where he became known first as an elegant horseman and then as a fencing master.  His pupils included the Duke of Devonshire and the Prince of Wales, and, the DNB informs us, “his école d’escrime in Soho became a crowded and fashionable haunt for young men of rank.”  In 1763 he published L’École d’Armes avec l’Explication générale des Principales Attitudes et Positions concernant l‘Escrime.  This was followed by a French and English edition in 1765.  Our volume is a copy of the first solely English edition; it is thought that the Chevalier d’Eon, who lived in London with Angelo for some time, helped him with the text.

Uncut copy in original blue boards.

An extra-illustrated copy of Pennant’s record of a tour he took in 1787. This copy includes additional engraved and manuscript titles, maps, views, portraits, plans, panoramas, maps, three original watercolors, and a pencil sketch.  There is also a set of plates relating to Jean Pierre Blanchard, a pioneering balloonist who, after his first ascent in 1784, made the first crossing of the English Channel by balloon.

On the verso of this advertisement is a manuscript receipted bill for silver and services dated 2 April 1753, made out to Nathaniel Warren.

This collection includes broadsides, a portrait, and cuttings from newspapers, all documenting Sir John Dinely’s search for a wife.  As these appeals show, Sir John spared no publicity to find a lady to marry, but he died single, at the age of 80, and the baronetcy became extinct.

Trusler (1735-1820) is described in the DNB as an “eccentric divine, literary compiler, and medical empiric.”   Although he superintended the Literary Society, established to abolish publishing, Trusler went on to write and publish many works, including Hogarth Moralized and, in 1806, the first part of his memoirs.  LWL owns a second part in manuscript, still unpublished.  One of Trusler’s schemes was a proposal “to print in script type, in imitation, of handwriting, about a hundred and fifty sermons at the price of one shilling each, in order to save the clergy both study and the trouble of transcribing” (DNB).

First edition, large paper copy, 3 vols extended to 6, extra-illustrated with 371 engraved portraits, political cartoons, views, and broadsides, 10 watercolors and wash sketches.

Includes Handel, Purcell, and other composers and provides a sample of concert music from the period. 

This acquisition adds to the LWL’s holdings of Trusler materials.  Here are tables for “Planters and Gardeners,” a “Table of Time” showing the number of days between any two in the year, and many other useful charts, “daily wanted in every family,” as the title boasts.

Text contains ms. annotations in one or more hands, including ms. on p. 111 (second sequence) of Gray's poem “Tophet,” and, on errata leaf, “The candidate.”

“The Candidate” was circulated by Gray and Walpole in manuscript in 1764, but it did not appear in print until the London Evening Post published it in 1777.  The manuscript copy here is in two hands, the second of which the dealer hoped to identify as Walpole’s.

A number of titles bear imprint of Norris and Son, Printer, Blomfield-Street, London-Wall; W.P. Norris, 15, Broker-Row, Moorfields; Stephen Clark, Number 15, Broker-Row, Moorfields; Clark and Norris, Moorfields.