The Cavendish-Bentinck Library contains many pre-1850 books, pamphlets and periodicals. There are many seventeenth and eighteenth century classic publications, such as Richard Brathwaite's The English gentlewoman: drawne out to the full body and Look ere you leap: or, A history of the lives and intrigues of leud women; first editions of publications by Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, the Brontes, Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf and many others. The periodical holdings include The Lady's magazine 1760-1839 and The Englishwoman's domestic magazine 1852-1879. Cookery and household management books include Hannah Wolley's The Queen-like closet, 1675, and Mrs Beeton's Book of household management, 1861. The collection is also strong on material relating to the suffrage campaigns, including many rare pamphlets. Newly acquired material was added to the collection until the 1950s - hence this collection houses most of the The Women's Library's printed holdings dating from 1600 to 1850. The Cavendish-Bentinck collection is catalogued on The Women's Library's online catalogue and volumes can be ordered by completing a Collections order slip and consulted in the Reading Room. Due to the age and fragility of most of the material in the Cavendish-Bentinck collection no photocopying is permitted.

W North collection, 1874-[1926], comprising a Leeds parliamentary election poster titled "Reaction versus Disunion", 1874; a report on potato disease by Robert Veitch and Son with sketches of vegetables, possibly by Veitch, 1892; and a children's poster titled "A Pageant of London", c 1926.

Letter from Josiah Tucker of Gloucester to Dr [William] Heberden, 11 Nov 1775. Asking Heberden's brother to call on 'Cadell in ye Strand' [i.e. Thomas Cadell the elder, publisher] to enquire about the fate and non-appearance of 800 copies of Tucker's Address and Appeal to ye Landed Interest [discussing possible independence for the American colonies], sent with a presentation list, ten days before. 'I pressed Cadell to be as expeditious as he co[ul]d, in order that the pamphlet might be published at least some days before Mr Burke was to make his famous motion ... The cold, or whatever is ye name of this new disorder, so rife at London, now begins to spread at Glocester [sic]: but I think, at present, it chiefly attacks young people. Another epidemic disorder, Electioneering, has attacked all ranks universally; and spares neither age, nor sex. What is most remarkable in this case is, that many of those, who were formerly notorious Jacobites, are now fierce Republicans: so that, form maintaining, that one Family has an indefeasible right to ye Throne, on ye extinction of that Family, we are to have no Throne at all'. Autograph, with signature.