Manuscripts
Frances Brooke letter to Thomas Cadell
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Thomas Grignon letter to John Thomas Smith
Manuscripts
In this letter, Grignon is requesting some lithographs of Covent Garden from engraver John Thomas Smith.
mssHM 78382
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Stephen Brooks letter to Henry Brooks
Manuscripts
In this letter to his brother Henry, Stephen Brooks writes of debts incurred while opening a store in San Francisco. He misses the comforts of life and the life of society, and plans to stay in California for one year. Letterhead is an image of "View of San Francisco, February 1850."
mssHM 16539
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Mary Jane Brooks letters to Thomas and Priscilla Marsh
Manuscripts
In this first letter (HM 19797, dated 1853, September 14), Mary Jane Brooks describes her journey to California "according to agreement" to her sister Priscilla and her husband Thomas Marsh. Much of this letter contains Brooks' description of Kingston, Jamaica, where she stopped en route to California. She laments that she has not yet found a man to run away with her. HM 19798, written August 12, 1886, and includes an envelope. Brooks is still in San Francisco, and writes of people she is seeing and letters written and received. The last letter in this sequence was written 1886, September 2. Brooks writes that she has reached her sixtieth birthday, but feels "old beyond my years." She discusses the possibility of getting her share of the farmstead left by her father, and hopes her sister will cooperate.
mssHM 19797-19799
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Mary Jane Brooks letters to Thomas and Priscilla Marsh
Manuscripts
These manuscripts are a series of letters from Mary Jane Brooks to her sister Priscilla Marsh and brother Thomas Marsh. HM 19790 is dated 1853, December 14 and 15, and lists the current price of goods in San Francisco. Mary Jane Brooks also writes of her family and friends. In the next letter (HM 19791, dated 1854, February 28), Mary Jane Brooks writes further of family and friends. HM 19792, dated 1854, July 14, tells of a fire in San Francisco, but the Brooks home was undamaged. Mary Jane Brooks writes in the next letter (HM 19793, dated 1855, July 28) that her father is not doing well. He has quit working, and "thinks he is not long for this world." HM 19794, the final letter in this sequence, is dated 1856, March 4. Father is still alive, but is ailing, and Mary Jane Brooks urges Priscilla to prepare their mother for his passing. The letters are written from San Francisco, and all are signed "Aaron and Mary Jane Brooks" but letters are in the handwriting of Mary Jane Brooks. With one-page typescript of an additional letter, dated 1856, July 5.
mssHM 19790-19794
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The excursion
Rare Books
Written for the very audience it portrays, this novel introduces the heroine, Maria Villiers, to London's "gentle" society and its glittering pastimes. Brooke drew upon the English courtship novel in the tradition of Eliza Haywood, Henry Fielding, and Frances Burney for her novel's overarching plot structure. But instead of concentrating on Maria's romantic adventures, she experiments with unusual treatments of subplots and unconventional characters. The most interesting aspect of her story is the development of Maria's ambition to win fame and fortune as a writer; it is one of the few portraits of a woman with literary ambitions by an early woman writer. Brooke's wry narrative voice foreshadows that of Jane Austen. The second volume in the series Eighteenth-Century Novels by Women, The Excursion contributes to our understanding of the development of the novel and offers a lively view of women's position in eighteenth-century English society. The editors' introduction places The Excursion firmly in the tradition of the English novel, provides a fresh biography of Brooke, and brings together the most important eighteenth- and twentieth-century criticism of Brooke's work.
606179
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Cadell & Davies Records
Manuscripts
The collection consists of manuscripts, correspondence and records (accounts, bills, estimates, receipts, orders to pay and promissory notes) of the London publishing firm of Cadell & Davies. The papers consist of the following series: 1. Manuscripts (Box 1) are arranged alphabetically by author and title. The manuscripts include legal opinions and statements concerning various aspects of publishing including copyright, literary property and pirated editions of published works. This series includes manuscripts by Cadell & Davies, Sir Ilay Campbell, Charles Dunster, and John Home. 2. Correspondence (Boxes 1-10) is arranged alphabetically by author. This series consists of business correspondence and records. There is a small number of personal letters and these tend to be from the Autograph Volumes. There is one box of Cadell & Davies correspondence with their various authors, suppliers and printers; most of these letters are draft copies, though some are signed. This series also includes letters by James Stanier Clarke, William Dickinson, Nathan Drake, William Gilpin, William Parr Greswell, John Home, Daniel Lysons, John Marsh, Edward Nares, William Pengree Sherlock, and Sharon Turner. 3. Records (Box 11) are arranged alphabetically by author or company. This series includes accounts, bills, estimates, receipts, orders to pay and promissory notes. Many of the records deal with the authors, printers, and engravers and publication details of the works mentioned in Manuscripts and Correspondence. Note to Readers and Strengths of the collection: A note about the material in this collection. The majority of the correspondence is addressed to or concerning Cadell & Davies. While the firm did publish the likes of Blackstone, Fielding and Johnson, unfortunately, the correspondents in this collection would be considered "lesser literary lights of the late 18th and early 19th centuries." As noted by the original cataloger in 1938, L. Herman Smith, "the most important writers" have been "skimmed" from the correspondence at some point in the past. The material from the two volumes of "Autograph Correspondence of Literary Men" was acquired by the same person who collected the Cadell & Davies correspondence. These "Autograph" letters are written by "minor literary figures" of the period and are addressed to "booksellers and antiquarians of the period," which appear to have been the reason for collecting these letters. As noted by Smith in 1938, the mysterious person who formed the original Cadell & Davies collection remains unidentified, and only the initials "J.W." appear on an autograph note in one of the volumes. The collector was in the habit of writing explanatory notes in pencil, below many of the letters; though it is best to verify the explanatory notes as some of the information has proven to be incorrect. Though the collection lacks the more well-known authors published by Cadell & Davies, it is a very useful collection for those researchers studying the world of British publishing in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. But, most importantly, it is also a very rich resource for studying the relationship between an author and a publisher, engraver, or printer.
mssCD 1-529