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.

(1) Letter from John Mitchell of 35 Wimpole Street, [London], to W M Maude, 24 May 1820. 'The Pamphlet you were so obliging to send me, I have read with great attention; and I think the reasoning of it so sound that I intend to vote for Lord Sutton's motion ...' ; autograph, with signature.

(2) Covering note from [W M Maude] to John Mitchell, [c1820]. Accompanying a 3rd edition of James Bischoff's pamphlet Reasons for the immediate repeal of the tax on foreign wool (1820); note undated and unsigned.

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.

Letter from William Hale of 4 Wood Street, Spitalfields, [London] to [Patrick] Colquhoun, 22 Nov 1806. Covering letter enclosing a copy of Hale's open letter to Samuel Whitbread MP on the subject of the poor of Spitalfields. Expresses 'a deep sense of the infinite obligations this parish is under to you'.

Autograph, with signature.

Letter from W G Burns of Derby to Colonel [Thomas Perronet] Thompson, 23 Feb 1846. 'As I think it [a] pity you should be ignorant [of] the nature of the arguments [u]rged against free trade principles I send you a specimen of [w]hat a clerical opponent can [d]o ...'

Autograph, with signature. Written on the dorse of the title page and the end fly leaf of a pamphlet [by Henry Robert Crewe] The repeal of the Corn Laws (1846).

Letter from John Woodrow of the Cannon Hotel, Cockspur Street to [Patrick] Colquhoun, 26 May 1818. Covering letter sending a copy of his pamphlet on savings banks and friendly societies.

Written in another hand and signed by Woodrow.

Letter from Sir John Sinclair of 133 George Street, Edinburgh to James [Thomson] Gibson-Craig of Riccardton, 23 Apr 1825. Covering note enclosing a copy of Sinclair's pamphlet Defence of the landed and farming interests (1825).

Autograph, with signature.

Letter from Samuel Roberts of Park Grange, [Sheffield, Yorkshire] to George Thompson, c/o Alexander Cruickshanks, Meadowside, Edinburgh, 26 Oct 1833. Covering note to a copy of Roberts's An address to the members of the two Wilberforce-Committees, London and York, concerning a suitable memorial to the late William Wilberforce, slavery abolitionist.

Autograph, with signature.

This note is written on a blank portion at the end of the third page of the printed pamphlet. The date stamp, frank, seal and address are on the fourth (back) page.

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 Henry Blain to Joseph T Pooley of 5 Church Court, [c1842]. Discussing the corn laws (with reference to Blain's pamphlet on the subject) and proposed duties [taxes]. Autograph, with signature ('H.B.'). Dated 'Sunday night'.

Letter from Richard Griffiths Welford of 6 Chancery Lane, [London] to [William Pleydell-Bouverie,] Earl of Radnor, 20 Mar 1843. Explaining that he has 'ventured to direct' his publisher to forward a copy of his 'tract upon the agricultural view of the corn law question' to Lord Radnor; giving his reasons for doing so.

Autograph, with signature.

Letter from Henry Carey Baird of H C Baird and Co, Philadelphia, USA to [Herbert Somerton] Foxwell, 4 Dec 1908. Enclosing a list of pamphlets by Mathew Carey [Baird's great uncle] and discussing the political economist Henry C Carey [Baird's uncle]. Typescript, signed by Baird.

Letter from Herbert Spencer of 340 Strand, [London] to Robert Chambers, 31 May 1852. Covering note enclosing a copy of Spencer's pamphlet A theory of population (1852).

Autograph, with signature. The front wrapper of the pamphlet is inscribed to Chambers.

Letter from William Bence Jones of Kilgarriffe, Clonakilty, County Cork to 'Madam' [? Mary Ann Gilbert, wife of Davies Gilbert (then President of the Royal Society) and founder of the Self-Suporting School of Industry, Willington, Sussex]. Acknowledging receipt of 'your pamphlet on self-supporting schools', but doubts whether such an establishment would be successful in Ireland. Enclosing a 'copy of the regulations of some allotments which I am trying to establish here'.

Autograph, with signature. The accompanying pamphlet is inscribed: 'Requested to be returned to Mrs. Gilbert'.

Letter from Robert Rawson of 84 Great Ducie Street, Manchester to Augustus De Morgan, [1845]. Covering note accompanying copies of a pamphlet On the summation of series ..., read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester on 12 Nov 1844. Describing his experiences working as a child coal miner. Proposes 'a new ... chymical theory'.

Autograph, with signature.

Letter from Thomas Joplin of 29 St Swithin's Lane, London to Sir Edward Knatchbull, Baronet and MP, 7 Jan 1831. Originally accompanying a copy of one of Joplin's pamphlets [missing].

Autograph, with signature.

Letter from Thomas Babington Macaulay of Holly Lodge, Kensington to Augustus De Morgan, 7 Nov 1857. Thanking him for a copy of his pamphlet [Answers to the questions communicated by Lord Overstone to the Decimal Coinage Commissioners; (London, 1857)]. 'I will frankly own to you that you seem to me greatly to overrate the advantages and greatly to underrate the inconveniences of the change which you recommend.

Autograph, with signature.