The Centre for English Local History

Letter of John Nichols to John Herrick of Beaumanor in Leicestershire, 9 Feb 1808 reporting the fire that had destroyed his printing office the previous evening.

Private Collection 4, PC4/3/ff8-9 NAD4789

Calendars of nearly 11,000 letters have been added to the database.  Those from private collections include:

• 4,385 letters from the autograph collection of Mary Anne Nichols which was formed largely from the literary manuscripts accumulated by John Nichols and John Bowyer Nichols
• 1183 letters in Nichols ‘Family Records’ volumes 6 (1800-1803), 8 (1808-1810), 10 (1813-1815), 11 (1816-1817), 12 (1818-1820) and 13 (1821-1823)
• 449 letters to or from Joseph Cradock (1742-1826), man of letters of Gumley, Leicestershire.  Most of these are from a single volume of his correspondence with John Nichols, 1792-1826, in Private Collection 2.

Other significant parts of the database include:

• 2655 letters to or from John Nichols, 1750-1826
• 2964 letters to or from John Bowyer Nichols, 1777-1863
• 801 letters to or from John Gough Nichols, 1816-1873
• 146 letters to or from Richard Gough (1735-1809), antiquary
• 103 letters referring to Dr Samuel Johnson
• 1506 letters that contain references to items submitted to the Gentleman’s Magazine
• 723 letters relating to Leicestershire
• 554 letters that were used by John Nichols and his son in preparing the Literary Anecdotes or Literary Illustrations
• 96 letters relating to John Nichols’ Progresses of Queen Elizabeth and Progresses of King James I
• 74 letters to or from William Bray (1736-1832), antiquary of Surrey
• 54 letters to or from George Lipscomb, historian of Buckinghamshire
• 43 letters to or from Andrew Coltee Ducarel (1713-1785), antiquary and librarian at Lambeth Palace
• 206 Nichols letters in the Butler Library, Columbia University, New York
• 82 letters to or from the publishers, Cadell and Davies
• 267 letters relating to John Nichols’ research for the life and works of William Hogarth
• 170 Nichols letters held by the British Library
• 142 Nichols letters held by the Society of Antiquaries of London
• 953 Nichols letters held by the Bodleian Library, Oxford
• 386 Nichols letters held by Yale University Library
• 407 letters relating to the Nichols family and the Gentleman’s Magazine at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C.
• 90 letters relating to John Gough Nichols’ pioneering work on medieval tiles held by Bucks County Historical Society at Doylestown, Pennsylvania

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