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A collection of letters and manuscripts of English and American authors, including one item from each of the following: Pearl S. Buck, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, Thomas Frognall Dibden, Charles Dickens, William Ewart Gladstone, Edmund Gosse, Hester Thackeray Ritchie Fuller, Rockwell Kent, Charles Kingsley, Edward George Bulwer Lytton, John Masefield, Clinton Scollard, William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman. In addition, there are 8 letters from Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) to Mr. and Mrs. Horace Twiss (Annie Sterky Greenwood Twiss), photographs of Alan and Margaret Kempner and miscellaneous Kempner items.

A collection of letters, engravings, prints, portraits, caricatures, other illustrations, and printed materials relating to Charles Dickens. Among the letters is an autograph letter by Dickens and copies of several Dickens letters to the publishers Lea & Blanchard. Many of the illustrations are portraits of Dickens while others are illustrations for his novels and stories, including numerous illustrations of scenes from dramatic versions of his works as well as some playbills for these productions.

Manuscripts, notes, transcripts, photographs, photostats, illustrations, and printed materials of Johnson. These are the research notes and manuscripts for his biographical works on Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott. An autograph fragment by Scott is included.

Primarily oil portraits of 18th century literary figures. There are also engravings, and pen and ink and pencil sketches. Among the literary figures are portraits of Samuel Butler, Lord Byron, Thomas Carlyle; Colley Cibber; Charles Dickens; John Evelyn; John Foxe; David Garrick; Thomas Gray; Charles Lamb; Sir Thomas More; Sir Walter Raleigh; Samuel Richardson; Richard B. Sheridan; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; William M. Thackeray; and others. There is also a portrait by Blanche Ames of George A. Plimpton. Among the artists represented in the collection are James Maubert, Frederick Sandys, and William Hogarth (attrib.)

Correspondence, manuscripts, documents, financial records, photographs, drawings, engravings, and printed materials of Benjamin. The personal and business papers concern Benjamin's publishing and bookselling company, his numerous benefactions, the disposal of his collections, and many printed catalogs for his company, 1883-1940. The two major correspondents are the business and financial records for the printing, binding, and extensive promotion through a network of agents of Stedman's A LIBRARY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE FROM THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT TO THE PRESENT TIME; new ed. (New York, W.E. Benjamin, 1894). There are also letters, manuscripts, documents, and drawings of English literary figures collected by Benjamin. Among these are six letters of George Eliot, 47 letters and six manuscripts of John Ruskin, and three letters and one manuscript of Joseph Mallord Turner, with four letters relating to the artist. In addition there ten drawings and watercolors by Ruskin.