British Library Treasures

A Curious Herbal - dandelion

Book

Elizabeth Blackwell’s beautiful illustrations of medicinal plants would be notable enough in their own right, but the un...

Admiral Lord Nelson’s Battle of Trafalgar Memorand...

Letter, Manuscript Created date: 9 October 1805

On 9 October 1805, twelve days before the Battle of Trafalgar, naval officer Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) sen...

'Alice's Adventures Under Ground', the original ma...

Manuscript, Fair copy, Artwork, Image Created date: 1862-64

Reverend Charles Dodgson was a mathematics tutor at Christ Church, Oxford in 1856 when he first met Alice Liddell and he...

America: 1765 Tax stamps

Philatelic item - Stamp Created date: 1765

These tax stamps were issued as a result of the 1765 Stamp Act passed by the British Government to extract taxation from...

An die Musik by Schubert

Musical score

This manuscript shows an example of Franz Schubert’s song composition. His setting of verses by Franz von Schober dates ...

Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi

Map Created date: between 1025 and 1050

This map was probably created at Canterbury between 1025 and 1050, but is probably ultimately based on a model dating fr...

Anne McLaren’s Notebook

Notebook Created date: 1955

Dame Anne McLaren (1927 – 2007) was a developmental biologist who pioneered techniques that led to human in vitro fertil...

Audubon's Birds of America

Book Created date: 1827-38

John James Audubon (1785 – 1851) was an ornithologist of the early 19th-century responsible for creating the largest and...

Bad quarto of Hamlet, 1603, also known as the firs...

Book, Quarto

This is the earliest surviving printed version of William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. There are only two copies of this b...

Bedford Hours

Manuscript Created date: c. 1410–1430

A lavishly illuminated Book of Hours, gifted to Henry VI by the Duke and Duchess of Bedford. The Bedford Hours is regar...

Beethoven's tuning fork

Tuning fork

We hold a number of unusual Beethoven-related items, including his laundry list, a set of his kitchen accounts and even ...

Beowulf

Manuscript Created date: c. 1000

Beowulf is the longest epic poem in Old English, the language spoken in Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest....

Brontë juvenilia: 'Blackwood's Young Men's Magazin...

Manuscript, Fair copy, Artwork, Image Created date: December 1829

Written in minute characters in imitation of print, this tiny book is the December 1829 issue of Blackwood’s Young Men’s...

Canada: 1851 12d black

Philatelic item - Stamp Created date: 1851

The first issue of stamps for the colony of Canada was made in 1851 and comprised three pence, six pence, and 12 pence v...

Cape of Good Hope: 1855-63 one shilling bright yel...

Philatelic item - Stamp Created date: 1885-63

Before South Africa was unified in 1910 the colony of Cape of Good Hope issued its own stamps, including the famous tria...