This collection consists of one box, and includes an autograph album containing 282 autographs of politicians, writers, and eminent figures of the church assembled around 1839 by members of the Penrose and Brooke families. Accompanying this album is a collection of manuscripts, of poetry or correspondence, to and from eminent figures of the time, including Robert Southey (letters of 1808 and 1812, and poems of 1829 and 1831), William Wordsworth (1829), Matthew Arnold (1872), Harriet Martineau, the Coleridge family (including Hartley, 1852), Felicia Hemans (1826) and Samuel Butler, Headmaster of Shrewsbury School (fourteen letters dating from 1806 to 1838).

Other letters range in date from 1685 to 1872 (Matthew Arnold to one of the surviving Brooke sisters, C2), with a few odd outliers, including an 1893 postcard from the Greek Archimandrite in London to David Nutt, the publisher (E15). Other items dating from after 1839 (for example those from Samuel Lee, F9, 1840; Harriet Martineau C1, F12, ?1850; William Parry F13, 1853; Charles Dickens F14, 1845; Matthew Arnold C2, 1872) relate to celebrated literary or cultural figures.

The nineteenth century saw twenty prime ministers; twelve prime ministers or their close descendants appear in this collection: Spencer Perceval (256), Lord Liverpool (F4), the Duke of Wellington (12), Sir George Grey (209), Viscount Melbourne (265, F5, F6), Sir Robert Peel (208), Lord John Russell (116), Earl of Derby (23), Viscount Palmerston (282), William Ewart Gladstone (12), Marquess of Salisbury (F16), and the Earl of Rosebery (119).

Also included in this collection are excerpts from Paul Merchant's background research on materials in this collection.

Merchant's original organization (folders 1a and A-I) has been preserved alongside the folder numbers employed for the collection as a whole.



The following printed volumes were also donated by Merchant and are held in Lewis & Clark's Special Collections:

James Montgomery, The Wanderer of Switzerland, 1812 James Montgomery, The World before the Flood, 1st ed. disbound, 1813 James Montgomery, The World Before the Flood, 3rd edition, 1814 Memoirs of James Montgomery, ed. Holland and Everett, 7 vols, 1854-1856 (vol. 2 in facsimile) Poetical Works of James Montgomery, 1863 Robert Southey, Roderick The Last of the Goths, 5th ed., 1818 Bernard Barton, Selections from the Poems and Letters, ed. Lucy Barton 1849