15th - 21
st century English literary manuscripts and letters, including authors with strong Liverpool connections.
Image: 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].
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.
The Library holds the archives of Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten, and collections of their printed work.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is a small number of commonplace books from Liverpool or Cheshire (for example LUL MS 149 and LUL MS 148) and other manuscripts, for example LUL MS 103, 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.
LUL MS 65/10 - Two autograph drafts of a memorial, on fifteen folio pages. Addressed to the King [Charles I?], giving an account of Edward Herbert, Baron of Cherbury's (1583-1648) scheme to establish an English colony in northern Brazil. c.1630?
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 Inc.Ryl.31.
The Felicia Hemans collection is reference "Hemans" and the catalogue is available online here. The Library catalogue holds the entries for the books held in SC&A by Hemans.
Felicia Dorothea Hemans née Browne (1793-1835) was a prolific and renowned Romantic poet. In 1826 the Literar
y Chronicle called her the first poetess of the day and with the exception of Lord Byron the sales of her publications during her lifetime, outstripped those of all other Romantic poets. Wordsworth himself lamented Hemans's death in his Extempore Effusion on the Death of James Hogg (1837):
Mourn rather for that holy spirit,
Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep;
For her who, ere her summer faded,
Has sunk into a breathless sleep.
Felicia Dorothea Browne was born in Liverpool in 1793, one of six children born to George Browne and his wife, Felicity Dorothea, (née Wagner). The Browne family moved to Wales when Felicia was seven years old and at this time, her favourite pastime was to sit in the apple tree and read Shakespeare. Felicia began writing poetry at a very young age, and Poems by Felicia Dorothea Browne was published in 1808 when she was just 15 years old.
Felicia Browne married Captain Alfred Hemans in 1812 and together they had 5 children - all boys - between 1813 and 1817. In 1818 the Hemans separated and Captain Hemans settled in Rome, leaving Felicia and their young family in Wales. This was to become a permanent separation and the two never met again.
Hemans's Records of Woman: With Other Poems (1828) concentrates on the various hardships faced by women and many of the trials in these poems were reflected in her own life - she had been responsible for the financial maintenance of her family for ten years when it was published, including not only her five sons, but also her mother and sister.
Hemans's literary manuscripts and correspondence are kept within archives all over the world, including the National Library of Scotland, and the Houghton Library, Harvard University. There have been manuscript poems and correspondence belonging to Hemans within Liverpool University's Special Collections and Archives for over 25 years. The further material was donated by Sir Sydney Giffard in July 2010, and had been discovered in an old trunk in his attic. The collection includes signed manuscript poems with amendments by Hemans, correspondence, and a notebook.
One particularly interesting find within the new acquisition has been a letter in which Hemans writes that she is completing a tragedy about the Sicilian Vespers, which became the play The Vespers of Palermo (1823). Hemans sold the copyright to the play for 200 guineas in 1823 and it was performed at Covent Garden, where unfortunately it was badly received. However, it was then taken to Edinburgh and performed with an introduction by Sir Walter Scott, with more success and Hemans struck up a regular correspondence with Scott from this time.
There is also a signed manuscript (pictured here) which includes the poem To The Passion Flower (Sept 1815). This manuscript was sent by 
Hemans to her friend Miss Maynard and it has several nice annotations, one of which reads, “This poem with considerable additions is now 1816, printed by (John) Murray”. Murray was an Edinburgh publisher who also boasted Byron as one of his authors. The collection of manuscripts highlights the place that Hemans held in Victorian society, and provides an insight into the way her poetry was written.
Nanora Sweet, ‘Hemans, Felicia Dorothea (1793–1835)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12888, accessed 14 October 2020]
