Literary Manuscripts Berg

Victorian Manuscripts from the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of The New York Public Library

The Berg Collection is recognised as one of the finest literary research collections in the world, and the Victorian holdings are the undisputed jewel in its crown.

A broad range of authors from across the nineteenth century make this an essential research tool for all scholars and students researching Victorian literature.

Most of these unique manuscripts are unavailable in any medium elsewhere. They are supplemented by some rare printed materials, including early editions annotated by the authors. Each author collection is included in its entirety, allowing users to browse and search the manuscripts as they would in the Berg Reading Room. Authors represented in this collection include:

Matthew Arnold
The Brontës
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Robert Browning
Wilkie Collins
Joseph Conrad
Charles Dickens
George Eliot
George Gissing
Thomas Hardy
Henry James
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
John Ruskin
Alfred Tennyson
William Makepeace Thackeray

This outstanding collection will prove an invaluable source for textual analysis of Victorian literature. Unpublished poems, working notebooks, holograph manuscripts and drawings trace the inspiration and genesis behind the period’s greatest works.

Researchers and students can trace the close interconnection of these Victorian authors – and subsequently their texts – through the mass of personal correspondence between them, revealing the close circles in which the Victorian literary world moved. This resource is of immense importance to those researching the business of Victorian publishing, documenting the relationship between writers and their publishers through correspondence and financial and legal documents.

Essays by leading scholars will suggest approaches to the material, provide textual analysis, and offer historical accounts of the Victorian publishing industry and literary culture.

Literary Manuscripts Berg

Victorian Manuscripts from the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of The New York Public Library

Editorial Board:

Dr Isaac Gewirtz, Curator of The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
Professor Marjorie Stone, Professor of English & Women’s Studies, Dalhousie University
Professor Beverley Taylor, Chair, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill
Professor Stephen Prickett, Department of English Literature, University of Glasgow

Source Library:

The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library

Nature of the Material:

Original manuscripts from the nineteenth century holdings of the Berg Collection. Selected collections of Victorian authors have been captured in their entirety. Manuscripts include literary drafts, correspondence, financial documents and personal items by or relating to the Berg authors. All items have detailed description of contents, utilising recently created NYPL metadata.

Scope of Collection:

The Berg Collection is recognised as one of the finest literary research collections in the world, and the Victorian holdings are the undisputed jewel in its crown. A broad range of authors from across the nineteenth century make this an essential research tool for all scholars and students researching Victorian literature.

Most of these unique manuscripts are unavailable in any medium elsewhere. Each author collection is included in its entirety, allowing users to browse and search the manuscripts as they would in the Berg Reading Room.

Collection Descriptions and Highlights:

Matthew Arnold

Manuscripts and correspondence by the author. The manuscripts include poems, essays, and notes about the author by Louise De la Ramee, Randall Jarrell, and Louis MacNeice. The correspondence, dating from 1857 to 1888, includes letters from the author to John Duke Coleridge, William D. O'Connor, Stanhope Sprigg, and others, as well a letter from William Douglas O'Connor to the author relating to Walt Whitman.

Emily Brontë

Pictorial works, manuscripts, and correspondence about the author. The collection includes an original water color drawing entitled, "Forget me not." There are also a number of holograph poems three of which; "Not many years but long enough to see," "Lady-bird! lady-bird! fly away home," and "On its bending stalk a bonny flower" have also been attributed to her sister, Charlotte. There are three poems in the collection also attributed to her brother, Patrick Branwell; "In glimpses of a spirit shore," "And all her tresses backward strayed," and "To the horse Black Eagle which I rode at the battle of Zamorna." The poem "There let thy bleeding branch alone" is also attributed to her sister, Anne. The correspondence consists of one letter written by Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey relating to the death of the author.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Manuscripts, a typescript, correspondence by and about the author, diaries, notebooks, financial and legal documents, portraits, and pictorial works. The manuscripts include a two-part diary from 1832; four notebooks containing working drafts of poems from 1843; as well as holograph odes, sonnets, essays and other poems, some of these in the hand of the author's mother or sister. The correspondence includes letters from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to W. J. Fox with a postscript signed by Robert Browning; to her sister, father and mother; as well as to Edward Moxon, Edgar Allan Poe, William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, Thomas Westwood, and others. Also included is correspondence between the author's family members. There are letters to Elizabeth Barrett Browning from John Forster, John Ruskin, Alfred Tennyson, W. M. Thackeray, William Wordsworth, and various members of her family, dating from 1818 through 1875.

Robert Browning
Manuscripts, correspondence, and a portrait photograph. The manuscripts consist of holograph poems, notes, and miscellaneous autograph material. The correspondence, dating from 1836 to 1889 includes letters written by the author to Isa Blagden, his son Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, Sophia May Eckley, Una Hawthorne, Leigh Hunt, Frederick Locker-Lampson, Edward Moxon, Thomas Talfourd, William Makepeace Thackeray, T. A. Trollope, and to others. Also included are letters, dating from 1859 to 1891, relating to the author between various correspodents including Elizabeth Barrett Browning to W. J. Fox; Alexandra Leighton Orr and Sir Leslie Stephen. Also present are letters to Browning from Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, John Forster, John Ruskin, Alfred Tennyson, and others, dating from 1840 to 1889.

Wilkie Collins

Manuscripts, correspondence by and about the author, a diary for 1867 and 1868, and legal documents. The manuscripts include holographs of stories, bibliographies, and notes for various works, as well as a manuscript copy in the hand of an amanuensis with holograph sections of "The Lighthouse." The correspondence includes letters, dating from 1849 to 1888, from the author to George Bentley, Richard Bentley, Peter Cunningham, George Smith, and others. Also included are letters relating to the author, dating from 1862 to 1898, between various correspondents including Harriet Elizabeth Bartley, Sir Walter Besant, Sir Hall Caine, Samuel Lucas, Harriet Martineau, the literary agency A. P. Watt & son, and others. There are letters to Collins from George Bentley, Charles Collins, Charles Dickens, A.P. Watt and Son, and others, dating from 1859-1891.

Joseph Conrad

Manuscripts and typescripts by and about the author, correspondence from, to, and about the author, financial and legal documents, portraits, and pictorial works. The manuscripts and typescripts include novels, stories, plays, and essays by the author, including the holograph of "The Secret Sharer" and the typescript of "Victory," as well as essays, reviews, bibliographies, and notes on his works. The correspondence, dating from 1885 to 1924, includes letters from the author to J. M. Barrie, J. M. Dent, Ford Madox Ford, Edward Garnett and others. Also present are letters relating to the author, dating from 1900 through 1956, between various correspondents. There are letters to Conrad from George Gissing, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling and others, dating from 1896 to 1923.

Charles Dickens

Manuscripts, typescripts, correspondence by and about the author, notebooks for 1843 through 1870, financial and legal documents, portraits and pictorial works. There are a number of pen and ink, watercolor, and pencil drawings of illustrations for Dickens' novels by H. K. Browne, John Leech, J. C. Clarke, Frederic Pailthorpe, and George Cruikshank. The manuscripts include drafts and passages from novels, stories, poems, scenarios, captions, essays, and miscellaneous autograph material of the author, as well as essays, plays, bibliographies, lectures, and other manuscript material about the author from George Bentley, Richard Bentley, Wilkie Collins, Vladimir Nabokov, and others. The correspondence includes letters, dating from [1833] to 1870, by the author; letters relating to the author, dating from 1836 to [1975], and letters to Dickens dating from [1836?] through 1891.

George Eliot

A manuscript, correspondence by and about the author, a diary for 1879, notebooks, and financial documents. The correspondence, dating from 1841 to 1879, includes letters from the author to Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, John Chapman, Sir Richard Owen, Bessie Parkes, Frances Trollope and others, as well as a copy of a typed letter to George Smith. Also included are letters relating to the author, dating from 1859 to 1880, between various correspondents including William Allingham, D. J. O'Donaghue, John Fiske, Mary Fisk Green Stoughton, Benjamin Jowett, Harriet Martineau, and others. There are letters to Eliot from C. H. Bray, Emily Ellsworth Ford, Sara Hennell, Calvin Ellis Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and others, dating from [1859?] to 1880.

George Gissing

Manuscripts, correspondence by and about the author, diaries kept from 1879 to 1913, a commonplace book, financial and legal documents, portraits, and pictorial works. The manuscripts include novels, stories, and essays by the author, including the holograph of the novels "Demos" and "New Grub Street." The diaries include two volumes kept by Sir Sydney Philip Perigal Waterlow from 1907 to 1913. The bulk of the collection includes correspondence, written by the author, dating from 1876 to 1904; letters relating to the author, dating from 1897 to 1954; and letters to the author from his brothers, Algernon and William Gissing, from the publishers Lawrence and Bullen, and from James B. Pinker, dating from 1875 through 1900.

Thomas Hardy

Manuscripts and typescripts, correspondence from, to, and about the author, financial and legal documents, portraits, and pictorial works. The manuscripts and typescripts include stories, essays, poems, drafts of novels, and press clippings. The correspondence includes letters, dating from 1872 to 1926, from the author; letters relating to the author, dating from 1905 to 1964; and letters to Hardy dating from 1875 through 1919.

Henry James

Manuscripts and typescripts, correspondence, diaries kept from 1907 to 1913, an undated notebook, and portraits. The manuscripts include drafts of stories and reviews, as well as pieces about the author by Max Beerbohm, Randall Jarrell, and Logan Pearsall Smith. The correspondence includes letters from the author, dating from 1882-1915; letters relating to the author, dating from 1890 to 1917, between various individuals; and letters to the author dating from [1879] to 1915, as well as letters from his father and from his nephew to various correspondents.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Manuscripts, correspondence, legal documents, and portraits. The collection includes a portrait photograph of Rossetti and a photostat of a drawing of Mrs. Ford Madox Brown. Among the manuscripts is a holograph poem entitled "John Keats Sixty Years Dead" and another holograph poem entitled "Aphorisms." The collection also includes manuscripts by: Max Beerbohm for the introduction of "Rossetti and his circle"; Sir Hall Caine for his poem "Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti," as well as notes for the poem; and a holograph poem by William Bell Scott, "On the birth of Thomas Carlyle's great-nephew." Also present is a manuscript essay in the form of a letter to the editor, entitled, "The late D. G. Rossetti," by Leonard R. Valpy.

John Ruskin

Manuscripts, correspondence, portraits, and pictorial works. The manuscripts include holograph poems and essays, as well as a manuscript, entitled "From Ruskin," by George Cram Cook in Cook's hand. The correspondence includes letters, dating from 1855 to 1889, from the author to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Oscar Wilde, and others. Also present are letters relating to the author, dating from [1859] to 1914, between various correspondents, including Francesca Alexander, Eliza Callahan Cleveland, Jean Ingelow, Walt Whitman, and others. There are letters to Ruskin from George Cruikshank, William Holman Hunt, Jean Ingelow, and Oscar Wilde, dating from 1867 to 1884.

Alfred Tennyson

Manuscripts, a typescript, correspondence, and a pencil portrait. The manuscripts include holograph poems, stories, and essays in the author's hand, as well as manuscripts by Algernon Charles Swinburne and Humbert Wolfe relating to the author. The correspondence includes letters by the author, dating from 1843 to 1892, to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, James T. Fields, H. Buxton Forman, Sir George Grove, Richard Henry Horne, James T. Knowles, Edward Moxon, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William M. Thackeray, and others. Also present are letters relating to the author, dating from 1855 to 1907.

William Makepeace Thackeray

Manuscripts, typescripts, notebooks, correspondence, financial documents, portraits, pictorial works, realia, and forged manuscripts and correspondence. The collection includes original portraits and pen-and-ink, pencil, and water color portraits and illustrations by Thackeray. The manuscripts include holograph poems, essays, lectures, portions of novels, notebooks, and diaries for 1845 and 1860, as well as miscellaneous manuscript materials relating to the author. The correspondence includes letters by Thackeray, from [1828]-1863; letters, from 1846-1937, relating to the author between various correspondents; and letters to Thackeray from Jane O. Brookfield, the Rev. W. H. Brookfield, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, George Cruikshank, Charles Dickens, Edward Fitzgerald, James Hannay, Bryan Waller Procter, Alfred Tennyson, and Frances Trollope, dating from 1843 to 1863.