William MacMurdo Duncan Scrapbook

printed text - further description below

A scrapbook seemingly begun by William McMurdo Duncan in the 1790s, based on the earliest manuscript entry entitled “Books Belonging to William McMurdo Duncan 10th Feby. 1799” with later additions perhaps made by other members of his family, as the names of William’s wife Marianne and his daughter Helen are inscribed on the front endpaper. The scrapbook includes newspaper clippings and broadsides relating to the city of Liverpool; shipping and naval news; the Napoleonic Wars; reports of the royal families of England and France; local news stories tending to reports of dramatic accidents and crimes, including reports of the abuse of servants and presumanbly enslaved girls. Also included are two manuscript poems (1816) and a manuscript list of books. Also included is a printed form, completed in manuscript, from New College Manchester, dated “May 1st, 1797”, for a Norwegian student, “Mr. Kield Moestre” (1776-1805), which gives his grades for two months (“March & April”) of lectures in the subjects of languages, mathematics, and natural philosophy. A page from the Observer (no. 1249) from 29 October 1815 includes a large woodcut “Island of Saint Helena” with “A descriptive sketch of the Island of Saint Helena”. Clippings from a column “Cabinet”. Laid in the front are over two dozen clippings from the column “Cabinet” that provide spiritual advice about conduct of life and marriage and other religious topics dated from the 1830s.

  • Creator: Duncan, William MacMurdo, 1772-1853.
  • Title: William MacMurdo Duncan Scrapbook : printed text and manuscript.
  • Production: Liverpool?, England, circa 1795-1816.

Catalog Record

LWL Mss vol. 270

Acquired October 2021

Catalogue of the library collected by the late J.R. Rowntree, Esq

A manuscript library catalogue of the Barrister John Russell Rowntree and his sister Elizabeth, who inherited her brother’s books after his death in 1831. The four sections are: History, voyages, travels, Bewick’s works, & miscellanies; Poetry and the drama, English; Strawberry-Hill publications; and Auctores Classici Gk. et Lat., &c. Although largely consisting of books published during Rowntree’s lifetime (1761-1831), the earliest recorded work is Wynkyn de Worde’s 1517 Incipiunt Opera Super Constitutiones prouinciales, 2nd edition. There are two other 16th century titles, and a good number of 17th and early 18th century items including a first edition of Hobbes’ Leviathan and Kircherius’ China Illustrated, 1667. From his lifetime, Rowntree collected a large number of travel books incorporating voyages and descriptions of the Far East, Africa, Australia (including Cook’s Voyages), the South Seas, Europe and Britain. Other subjects include a large Bewick collection, law, religion and literature in addition to drama and classics. Rowntree’s substantial holdings of items printed by the private press at Strawberry Hill, established by Horace Walpole in 1757, include thirty of the thirty-five ‘publications’ recorded in Horace Walpole and the Strawberry Hill Press, Havens, 1901 (there are a further 66 ephemeral items noted as being published by the press). Also included in the collection are two of the first books to be printed, Gray’s poems (two copies) and Hentzner’s A Journey into England, both printed in 1757.

TitleCatalogue of the library collected by the late J.R. Rowntree, Esq. of Stockon-on-Tees, and the late property of his deceased sister Miss Elizabeth Rowntree, of the same place …, 1843 October / catalogued by William Robinson, bookseller.

Catalog Record

LWL Mss Vol. 229

Acquired March 2017

Catalogue of Bradenham House library, Norfolk

wlacq000163_M_0000 (653x1024)

lwacq000164_M_0000 (1024x944)

Manuscript catalog of approximately 1600 books in the Bradenham House library, Norfolk including eight incunables and a second folio of Shakespeare. The entries are arranged by format beginning with folios and followed by quartos and “octavo et infra” with some titles struck through and annotated with a name. Each entry includes: author, title, place of publication, and date. The library was sold in 1967 in 826 lots by Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge in a 2-day sale: “Catalogue of the select library of a gentleman … a valuable portion of the topographical library of the late W.H.H. of Bradenham Hall …”

  • AuthorHaggard, William Henry, 1776-1837.
  • TitleCatalogue of Bradenham House library, Norfolk, [1807-1833].

Catalog Record

LWL Mss Vol. 214

Acquired July 2014