Literary Manuscripts
15th - 21st century English literary manuscripts and letters, including authors with strong Liverpool connections.
Manuscript sonnet on Robert Burns in a printed collection of 18th-century poems:
SPEC Y78.3.747.
The sonnet is written on the blank page at the end of the locally-printed Liverpool testimonials to the departed genius of Robert Burns [1800].
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The University's literary manuscript collections also include the archives of more contemporary Liverpool Poets and manuscripts from the 15th century to the present day.
Liverpool Poets
The Library holds the archives of Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten, and collections of their printed work.
Merseyside writers
The Merseyside writers collection contains manuscripts and printed works by other local authors, for example Matt Simpson, and includes poster poems, broadsheets and other ephemeral publications.
University of Liverpool collections
The University Archives include the correspondence of figures such as Kenneth Muir, L.C. Martin and John Sampson with their literary contemporaries, and the archive of Liverpool University Press.
21st and 20th century
There are significant holdings of Ted Hughes's work in the Hughes Collection, particularly relating to his version of Seneca's Oedipus; the manuscript material is supported by a strong collection of Ted Hughes's published work.
There are valuable examples of the work of Seamus Heaney, Thom Gunn, Sylvia Plath, D.H. Lawrence, and Cecil Day Lewis.
The Rathbone Papers also contain correspondence of Bruce Richmond, editor of the Times Literary Supplement from 1902-1937.
19th century
The Fraser Collection includes manuscripts and correspondence relating to the work of James Thomson and Richard Le Gallienne for John Fraser at the Liverpool tobacco firm of Cope Bros. There are also literary manuscripts of the local authors Felicia Hemans and Augustine Birrell.
The Autograph letter collections, particularly of the Rathbone family and Joseph Blanco White include correspondence with their literary contemporaries including Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Felicia Hemans and William Smyth.
17th-18th century
There is a small number of commonplace books from Liverpool or Cheshire (for example LUL MS.25.67 and LUL MS.26.3.34) and other manuscripts, for example LUL MS.9.17, a play by William Richards, Rector of Helmdon.
There are also examples of manuscript verse and letters found in the printed book collection, now kept separately, and annotations in printed books, identified in the catalogue records, for example the anti-Tory satire in SPEC L3.28 and the sonnet to Robert Burns in SPEC Y78.3.747.
Medieval and Renaissance
There are three medieval English literary texts in the collections:
LUL MS.F.4.8: William Langland, Piers Plowman. English. Early 15th century. Clara Hornby (gift 1944).
LUL MS.F.4.9: William of Nassyngton, etc. English. 14th/15th century. Sydney Jones (presented 1946).
LUL MS.F.4.10: Chastising of God's Children, etc. English. Late 15th century. Contemporary binding. Mrs Harold Cohen (gift 1949).
The Early printed books collection includes occasional manuscript verse annotation, for example lines by Richard Barnfield in SPEC E.P.I.A295.2.
See Literary Manuscripts in Highlights gallery