The correct, intended recipient of this letter, Miss Fourmantel, had met the gregarious novelist Laurence Sterne in York a few months earlier, and an intimate correspondence immediately sprang up. It turns out there was no "Miss Fothergill" (the name crossed out above) to worry about, and by the time of this letter the relationship was winding down anyway. Sterne had just published the first two parts of Tristram Shandy and was catapulting out of obscurity. He could not run the risk of being seen too often in the company of the young singer, even though she had helped introduce him to the fashionable London set in the first place.

^{Laurence Sterne, after the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1760)}

There is no concrete evidence that Sterne and his "dear Kitty" were physically involved, and a turn-of-the-century Morgan librarian has inserted a note with the collection reminding readers that their brief relationship was "largely epistolary." The tone and content of the letters, however, are more intense than the sentimental correspondence he carried on with other women.

He closes the letter above: "I have ordered Matthew to turn thief & steal you a quart of Honey -- What is Honey to the sweetness of thee, who art sweeter than all the flowers it comes from. -- I love you to distraction Kitty -- & will love you on so to Eternity." By "eternity," though, it turns out that Sterne actually meant a just few more months, into the Spring of 1760, and we don't really know what happened to Kitty after this. There an account that she was consumed with grief after her relationship with Sterne ended and that she wound up in  "Private Mad-House," but this story does not come from a  credible source, and the last thing we know for sure is that she sang a benefit concert in London in 1763.

These letters were passed down to the daughter of one of Miss Fourmantel's friends (whence sprang the madhouse legend); she sold them to the Murray family and Pierpont Morgan eventually acquired them for his library in 1912.

For more information about the collection, click here.

_{The Leon Levy Foundation is generously underwriting a major project to upgrade catalog records for the Morgan's collection of literary and historical manuscripts. The project is the most substantive effort to date to improve primary research information on a portion of this large and highly important collection.}

^{Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Robert Sidney. From a painting by Mark Garrard at the Sidney's ancestral home Penshurst Palace, Kent.}

Sir Philip Sidney, the sixteenth-century English courtier and poet, wrote this letter to the famous printer Christophe Plantin asking him to send three books. What you see below is the full text. It is possible that this is the close of a longer letter, but if that is the case any preceding pages have long been lost. The letter is not dated and the paper's watermark -- the simple initials "CR" surmounted by a fleur-de-lis -- doesn't give any clues. By closely examining the book order, however, we can narrow down the possible date of writing to just two and a half years.

Sidney does not provide full citations for the books that he wants -- he just lists them as: Les mapps dlortelius en la plus nouvelle edition; Le livre en flaman descripvant les havres de leurope; and La description des villes et fortresses. The casual references indicate that Plantin may have been the printer of these works.

Working from this assumption, we can identify the first request as Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World) by Flemish geographer Abraham Ortelius. This is considered to be the first true atlas, and Sidney's request for the "newest edition" may refer to Plantin's German edition of 1580, or a later Latin edition of 1584.

Sidney's second request, for a Flemish work on the harbors of Europe, is the famous Speculum Nauticum, by the Dutch seaman and cartographer Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer, which was first published by Plantin in 1584. In the map below, notice the three fanciful sea monsters off of the coast of England.

^{A hand-colored map of the English coastline from Waghenaer's Der Spieghel der Zeevaerdt}

Sidney's third request, for a work simply on "cities and fortresses," is the most difficult to identify. English scholar (and a former Keeper of Printed Books at the Morgan) Curt F. Bühler suggested that this might refer to Guicciardini's Description de touts les Païs-Bas... (Anvers: Plantin, 1582) or Discours sur plusieurs poincts de l'architecture de guerre... (Anvers: Plantin, 1579).

So although Sidney has not dated his quick note, a little detective work shows us that it could not have been written before 1584, and Bühler further suggests that it was written in the summer of 1585. Sidney died in October of the following year from complications of a bullet wound in his leg.

Once owned by the famous collector Sir Thomas Phillipps, this letter entered the Library when Pierpont Morgan purchased it in 1905. For more information about the letter, click here.

_{The Leon Levy Foundation is generously underwriting a major project to upgrade catalog records for the Morgan's collection of literary and historical manuscripts. The project is the most substantive effort to date to improve primary research information on a portion of this large and highly important collection.}

Full transcription follows.

My dear Olive,

I Received your letter by Mr. Sheldon, butt you send mee no word whether you had mine I sent you by Mr. Sanderson; it makes no matter, for I write to you so often, that it were well sum of them mite miscarrie; if it were possible to leave the Prince I would come to see you with all my harte, for I never desired it more in my Life, I have now so settled my happiness in your armes, that I take no rest owte of them, nor can I ease my paine, though my ague hathe left mee, with owte the sight of you, if my master [comes] not to towne this Shrofftide I mean to come and choose you for my Valentine, butt before I think it will bee impossible, therefore sweete Love, trouble not your selfe with the desire of seeing mee till then, and sastisfie it with this that never man loved a wife more then I do you, and maye I want God and his grace when I faile to bee

Your true loving husband,

Endymion Porter

[Postscript below] All mightie God bless my children, send mee word if you thinke Endymion will bee as prettie as the other two.

Olive bore Endymion twelve children, seven of whom survived infancy. Of the five sons, the two eldest (George and Charles) were born in 1621 and 1623 respectively, and this letter (see the postscript) was probably therefore written in 1624 or later. Apparently, Endymion did not survive infancy.

For more information about this letter, click here.

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_{The Leon Levy Foundation is generously underwriting a major project to upgrade catalog records for the Morgan's collection of literary and historical manuscripts. The project is the most substantive effort to date to improve primary research information on a portion of this large and highly important collection.}

Life, & the world, or whatever we call that which we are & feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being ... Life, the great miracle, we admire not, because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the function of that which is its object.

So opens Percy Bysshe Shelley's short philosophical meditation "On Life." This essay, which is considered one of his most important prose works, was first penned sometime in late 1819 in the back of a small vellum-bound notebook following the much longer A Philosophical View of Reform. The notebook was disbound, probably around 1916, and while there's no physical evidence that these leaves came at the end of the notebook, On Life grew out of an early passage from the lengthier treatise. Neither essay was published in Shelley's lifetime -- another version of On Life was printed with two other short essays in The Athenaeum in 1832, but A Philosophical View of Reform did not appear in print until 1920, and this manuscript was not edited for publication until the mid-20th century. From the first page, seen here, you can tell that this is clearly an early and working draft of the essay. It isn't titled and Shelley has made several small edits to the text.

The notebook was small -- these pages, which show no evidence of having been cut down, measure only six inches high -- and it was formatted as an oblong notebook (the pages were originally sewn into the vellum binding at the top of the page as it is formatted here). It was given in 1894 by the author's daughter-in-law to the Reverend Stopford Brooke, who removed the final twenty pages containing this essay and in 1916 contributed them to a Christie's sale that benefited the British Red Cross. Brooke noted in a letter just before the sale that he did not want to part with the essay, but that he thought Lady Shelley "would be glad that it should minister to the wounded of this war." 

After the notebook was broken up, the portion including A Philosophical View of Reform passed to Brooke's daughter, and is now held by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle at the New York Public Library. For more information about the Morgan's manuscript, click here.

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N.B. The portrait miniature above is Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Boy. By an unknown English artist, the miniature of watercolor and gouache on ivory measures just 3 1/4 inches high. It was given by Shelley to his friend Leigh Hunt in the presence of Lord Byron as documented by Hunt's inscription on the verso. For more information, click here.

_{The Leon Levy Foundation is generously underwriting a major project to upgrade catalog records for the Morgan's collection of literary and historical manuscripts. The project is the most substantive effort to date to improve primary research information on a portion of this large and highly important collection.}

What do you get for the dad who has everything? Something more personal than a sweater or tie, for sure. Books tend to be a good choice, but if he has already built a stunning three-tiered library and study to house his growing collection of books and manuscripts, the latest bestseller just won't do. One year, J.P. Morgan, Jr. (known as Jack) found a perfect little gift for his father. In 1906 and 1907, Pierpont Morgan had acquired some manuscripts of the American writer Bret Harte. Largely forgotten today, Harte was one of America's most popular (and well-paid) writers of the late 19th century. Jack built on this interest of his father's by giving him, for Christmas in 1909, the manuscript of Harte's short story How Santa Claus came to Simpson's Bar.

The manuscript is written on oblong yellow-gold sheets of paper and Harte has inserted a few revisions, showing us that this is a working draft. The story is about a sick boy who on Christmas Eve asks his father, a barkeep in the Sacramento valley, whether "Sandy Claws" is real. The boy doesn't know that Christmas is a holiday and he's never heard of Santa until the day before when someone tells him that "everywhere else but yer everybody gives things to everybody Chrismiss" and that someone named climbs down the chimney and leaves gifts in the children's boots. Overhearing the sad exchange, a bar patron rides out into the night to acquire some gifts for the boy. He returns, wounded by a highwayman, just before daybreak with a satchel of toys: "It don't look like much, that's a fact," said Dick, ruefully . . . "But it's the best we could do . . . Take 'em, Old Man, and put 'em in his stocking, and tell him -- tell him, you know -- hold me, Old Man --" The Old Man caught at his sinking figure. "Tell him," said Dick, with a weak little laugh -- "tell him Sandy Claus has come."

The gift clearly touched a soft spot in Pierpont Morgan's heart -- when the manuscripts collection was assigned formal accession numbers, this, along with another Christmas gift from Jack, were given MA 1 and MA 2.

The sentimental story was first printed in the Atlantic Monthly in March of 1872. To read it in full, click here. And to learn more about the manuscript, click here.

_{The Leon Levy Foundation is generously underwriting a major project to upgrade catalog records for the Morgan's collection of literary and historical manuscripts. The project is the most substantive effort to date to improve primary research information on a portion of this large and highly important collection.}

Regarding the project for his father, Doyle says that he has gotten so little done that he is afraid to look at it and that no one should be surprised if "the unfortunate being who now addresses you should in a fit of despair put off his Christmas day until some future period" when he will be better prepared. He apologizes for not finishing the project, citing an overwhelming amount of "Punchification." Turning the page, his father was then confronted by this two-page allegorical drawing.

Following further playful remarks ("Now, don't you think that it will be much better, instead of showing you in an unfinished state the little work I have done for you, to wait until after Christmas and get it into a more satisfactory condition? Of course you do!"), Doyle launches in to a detailed description of the scene: "The composition is an allegorical one, and may be looked upon (by those who wish to do so) as superior to anything of the kind by the best of the old masters. All must acknowledge that it is very affecting, and in fact it could not be better, unless, indeed, it were improved, which it is not likely to be." He goes on: "It represents the youth reclining against the back of his chair pensively gazing at -- nothing, and looking most melancholy ... The demon Punch perched upon the table, in exultation, points to the "Procession" of his "Christmas Piece". Harlequin &c., as indicative of Christmas, weep over the little quantity of yours ... and others in the background are plainly showing that it was not for want of paper." Doyle, it seems, was not the best at making his deadlines. But what father, at least, could refuse to forgive him after so charming a letter?

This letter will be on view at the Morgan next year, in an introductory section of the exhibit "Beatrix Potter's Picture Letters" (2 November 2012 to 27 January 2013). For more information about the letter, click here.

_{The Leon Levy Foundation is generously underwriting a major project to upgrade catalog records for the Morgan's collection of literary and historical manuscripts. The project is the most substantive effort to date to improve primary research information on a portion of this large and highly important collection.}

The top illustration is clearly from Cruikshank's engraving for Grimm's "Jorinda and Jorindel," shown here:

This is the story of a fairy (beautiful by day, but an old woman once night falls) who has turned 700 young women into birds, which she keeps individually caged in her castle. Jorinda, who was "prettier than all the pretty girls that ever was seen" is turned into a nightingale before her lover Jorindel. This scene comes at the end of the tale, just at the moment when Jorindel uses an enchanted flower to restore Jorinda to her human form. The story does not give physical descriptions of the characters beyond the generic "beautiful" and "pretty,"and while Ruskin's poem is not drawn from the story it nevertheless echoes and perhaps further develops the character of Grimm's fairy. He has taken the old fairy's ill-will and added scarlet to her cloak and picked up on her "staring eyes" and "parrot nose."

The unrelated Water Kelpie that appears below the poem is perhaps one of my favorite illustrations in the book:

The Kelpie, which traditionally takes the form of a horse, is a creature native to the Scottish and Irish rivers and lochs that lures children into the water to drown them. I'm not sure of his relationship to Ruskin's old fairy, but check out those eye-rays!

A few pages later, Ruskin's "The Dwarf" appears:

This poem and accompanying illustrations are even more clearly derived from Grimm's "The Blue Light" and Cruikshank's vignette:

I love Ruskin's delicate coloring and his enthusiastic shading of the clouds, and it is a pretty successful rendition, especially for a 10-year old.

Ruskin's appreciation for Cruikshank's engravings was enduring. When, long established as an art critic, he wrote the introduction to a later edition of Grimm's German Popular Stories (1868), Ruskin called Cruikshank's illustrations "quite sterling and admirable art, in a class precisely parallel in elevation to the character of the tales which they illustrate; and the original etchings as I have before said in the Appendix to my Elements of Drawing were unrivalled in masterfulness of touch since Rembrandt; (in some qualities of delineation unrivalled even by him)."

For more information about Ruskin's The Puppet Show, click here.

_{The Leon Levy Foundation is generously underwriting a major project to upgrade catalog records for the Morgan's collection of literary and historical manuscripts. The project is the most substantive effort to date to improve primary research information on a portion of this large and highly important collection.}

^{Self portrait by Robert Fulton, nicknamed "Quicksilver Bob" by his schoolfellows.}

Fulton was not the first to build a steam-powered vessel -- one early model was launched in 1704 by the French inventor Denis Papin (who also developed a pressure cooker). But Fulton was the first to find commercial success with the idea. In 1802, he began collaborating with Robert Livingston, who already held exclusive rights to operate steamboats in New York State, and five years later the weekly New York to Albany route was established. The steamer's first voyage went entirely unnoticed in the New York papers until after Fulton returned to the city and penned a letter to the editor of the American Citizen.

Shortly thereafter, however, rival steamboat developers began popping up. In 1808, the Winans brothers began operating a steamboat in Vermont; in 1809, John Molson started running a steamer from Quebec to Montreal; and even Livingston's brother-in-law John Stevens proved to be a rival. Fulton and Livingston rapidly expanded their operations and controlled steamboats on several rivers, but by 1813 it seems that Fulton felt the need to defend his commercial interests.

This essay, which is entirely in Fulton's hand, gives the history of his steamboat and argues that other steamboat developers have essentially copied his inventions and improvements, concluding (about half-way down the page above) "Away then with ephemeral pretenders, abortive experiments and imaginations never proved or practiced. Give Livingston and Fulton the merit and reward which to them is due. This noble invention is among the highest blessings of the water."

Fulton's steamboats did of course go on to change the face of the American landscape and revolutionize travel and commerce. Steamboat traffic dominated the Erie Canal and the Mississippi River for most of the 19th century, right in to the 20th, and Mark Twain, our most famous literary steamboat pilot, famously stated "I am a person who would quit authorizing in a minute to go to piloting, if the madam would stand it. I would rather sink a steamboat than eat, any time."

For more information about Robert Fulton's manuscript and self portrait, click here.

_{The Leon Levy Foundation is generously underwriting a major project to upgrade catalog records for the Morgan's collection of literary and historical manuscripts. The project is the most substantive effort to date to improve primary research information on a portion of this large and highly important collection.}

This document, dated 5 March 1205, is a charter that conferred land holdings or privileges on the abbey and monks at Selby. It is written on a piece of vellum in a gothic script, and it is difficult to read -- not only because the style of handwriting is unfamiliar, but also because of the method of abbreviating words that is peculiar to medieval Latin. In the extract below, the almost tilde-shaped macrons above words indicate that letters are missing. For instance, the first five words can be expanded to Johns dei gratia Rex Angliae. And in the third line, you can see where they Abbey and monks of Selby are mentioned. Notice the character that looks like a crossed "7" -- this is an ancient shorthand symbol for "et," which is now represented with an ampersand.

John signed the charter ".J. Reg" on the verso, along with a note that I cannot decipher. Notice how the quality of his penmanship varies from that of the trained scribe above. His signature seems almost to quaver, and not only does he fail to form the individual letters with the precision that is present in the formal gothic script, but the ink fades out towards the end of each line. I am curious about John's added note -- can you help us decipher it?

This is the oldest item in the Morgan's Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts; for more information about it, click here.

_{The Leon Levy Foundation is generously underwriting a major project to upgrade catalog records for the Morgan's collection of literary and historical manuscripts. The project is the most substantive effort to date to improve primary research information on a portion of this large and highly important collection.}

The book is mostly filled with calligraphic exercises in French and Latin, but it opens with a few pages of illustrations. Here, along with a rather pink-lipped John the Baptist, we have a couple of waterfowl, a cat, two pretty human-looking rabbits, "le loup tenant le brebis" and, at the lower right, what's purported to be a fox but looks to me more like a lamb floating in the grass.

The illustrations are followed by several alphabets, beginning with these large decorated initials, each of which opens a Bible verse.

The decorated initials are followed by exercises in other scripts. Notice the long "s" (which looks like an uncrossed "f") and the ligatures on the bottom line of this alphabet.

This alphabet penned in a batarde script is difficult to read, especially because of the ghosting effect created by the ink on the other side of the pages, but the elaborate "f" in the upper right hand corner is easy to pick out:

The final exercise is a series of numbers, which, like the rest of the the manuscript, has been penned will iron gall ink. Look closely at the "3" and the "5" -- here, the acidity of the ink has eaten clearly through the paper, and the apparently uncolored portion of the numbers is actually the page below.

Duchemin has written his name at the foot of nearly every page, but besides his name and the fact that he was probably ordained in 1740, we don't know anything about the man or where he came from. One page is strangely dated 1733, but the handwriting remains fairly consistent throughout the manuscript, and it doesn't have the feel of something that was worked on for seven years. Do you happen to know anything about our Duchemin?

For more information about this manuscript, click here.

_{The Leon Levy Foundation is generously underwriting a major project to upgrade catalog records for the Morgan's collection of literary and historical manuscripts. The project is the most substantive effort to date to improve primary research information on a portion of this large and highly important collection.}