Few families enjoy such a remarkable reputation for their contribution to the literature and intellectual life of Britain as the Godwins and the Shelleys. Yet this reputation was shaped in a subtle way by the selective release of literary manuscripts...

At the height of the debate about the slave trade and its abolition in the 1780s and '90s, each side issued pamphlets in support of its position. This publication reproduces a selection of representative pamphlets encompassing the arguments put forwa...

A beautiful little manuscript in the Bodleian Library, which was purchased for GBP 6 at auction in 1887, was discovered afterwards to belong to none other than Margaret, Queen of Scotland and was, according to her biographer, her favourite book. The...