Almost every major writer of the Restoration period and the eighteenth century is represented and the collection contains many periodicals. The collection, including modern works, consists of approximately 9000 books and 1500 pamphlets. Letters and cuttings found among the books have been extracted for conservation reasons, but are available on request. The Alston collection was bought from the noted English linguistics scholar, Dr Robin Alston. The collection of almost 1500 items is chiefly concerned with linguistics and most of the items were published before 1850.
Later material is in the general collection.
There are early encyclopaedias, dictionaries of various languages and subjects, elocution books, grammars and spelling books. Also included in the collection are some works by classical authors such as Cicero, Aristotle, Longinus and Quintilian. The Pelli Collection There are more than 1300 titles in over 2500 volumes in this collection, many of them eighteenth century and the remainder mostly early nineteenth century. Within these groups there is a wide variety of major and minor authors. Writings include both scholarly works and the essays, memoirs, plays, confessions and didactic and satirical writings which were then popular.