The Miscellaneous Manuscripts include some local history material, particularly relating to nineteenth-century bonds and deeds and to the coal trade as well as A collection of recipes, compiled in the years 1684-5; agriculturalist Robert Bakewell's Letters to George Culley, 1786-1792; eighteenth-century household account books; manuscript letters from Henry Liddell on the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion; early twentieth-century National Service League memoranda; An alphabetical list of members of the Northumberland Militia enrolled between 1809 and 1813, giving their full names, places of residence, trades, ages, dates of enrolment, and parishes for which installed; a fair copy of poems by Mary Coleridge, bound in vellum, which she made for a friend in 1891 and which was later published as Fancy's Following; worksheets, correspondence, typescripts and a postcard relating to Tony Harrison's Newcastle is Peru and letters from Sean O'Casey to the People's Theatre, Newcastle.

This small collection comprises books which were produced in the infancy of the art of printing, and specifically before 1500. The collection includes such works as the Epistolae of St. Jerome, printed in Palma in 1480, Opus de peste, a tract on plague printed in Bologna in 1478, and the first printed book on architecture, Alberti's De Re Aedificatoria (1485).

The Sandes Library is the library of Kendal Grammar School and is made up of books which were originally given to the Blue Coat School and Hospital in Kendal by their founder Thomas Sandes (1606-1681), a local cloth merchant and former mayor of Kendal. The Blue Coat School was amalgamated with the Kendal Grammar School in 1887, and the library was eventually deposited with Newcastle University Library in the 1960s.

As with the other school libraries in our collections, the Sandes Library is a valuable example of the kind of material which might have been found in a school library of the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries.

The Post-incunabula collection does not strictly comply with the prescribed date range which often defines 'post-incunabula' but does contain English and foreign books printed 1501-1640. It includes works by John Stow, John Speed, Torquato Tasso and William Tynedale, as well as Robert Burton's The anatomy of melancholy, 4th ed. (1632), Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), Reginald Scot's The discouerie of witchcraft (1584), Palladio's architectural work I qvattro libri dell'architettvra (1581), Edmund Spenser's The faerie queene (1590-96) and Thomas Heywood's The hierarchie of the blessed angells (1635).

The Rare Books collection is miscellaneous but literature and local history are two of the collections strengths. Items date from the mid-Sixteenth Century to the present day (facsimile of The Arundel Choirbook, 2003). Particularly notable items include a German propaganda sheet which was dropped on England in 1940: Adolf Hitler, A last appeal to reason; Edward Jenner's Inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolæ vaccinæ (1798); various works by Charles Dickens which remain in their original serialised parts, complete with paper wrappers; herbals by Elizabeth Blackwell (1739) and Nicholas Culpepper (1802); a volume of printed ephemera, broadsides, posters and cartoons referring to elections in Northumberland, Newcastle and Tyneside divisions, including cartoons of Joseph Cowen (1826-1931) as well as some English Revolution (or Civil War) tracts and the manuscript Design no. 11 - Plans, specifications and estimates for building a chapel in the township of St. John, Newcastle upon Tyne by John Dobson (1840).

The Friends Collection has been built-up through purchases with funds from the Friends of the Library. It contains such rare books as Robert Boyle's Tracts: containing I. Suspicions about some hidden qualities of the air … (1674), J. Dryden's Albion and Albanius (1691), Some considerations on the consequences of the French settling colonies on the Mississippi: with respect to the trade and safety of the English plantations in America and the West-Indies (1720), various pamphlets by Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke, Newcastle songsters and other local material such as Report of the Orphan-House Sunday-School, Newcastle upon Tyne (1815-16). English literature is a particular strength of the collection.

The 17th Century Collection is a small but expanding collection of books printed 1600-1699. The books it contains are a good reflection of this period as a time of rebellions, intrigues and conspiracies; hierarchical power; and strong religious views. Sermons and speeches were commonly printed.

Bequeathed by Edwin Clarke (1919-1996), approximately half of the Clarke Miscellaneous Collection was published in the Twentieth Century but the collection contains material dating back to 1655. It is a collection with a strong bias towards the occult, ritual and folklore, with some rogue items relating to book history.

Examples include A laconic narrative on the life & death of James Wilson, known by the name of Daft Jamie (1881) - a victim of Burke and Hare -, F. Hutchinson's An historical essay concerning witchcraft (1718), The Yorkshire spiritual telegraph and British harmonial advocate (1857) and a book on exercise by H. Halsted called Motion-life: or the demon of the age and means of its exorcism (1856).

The 18th Century Collection contains approximately 4000 volumes printed 1700-1799. The collection covers a variety of subjects including aspects of the penal system, education and the constitution. Highlights include the famous treatise by the English philosopher and enlightenment thinker John Locke, Some thoughts concerning education ( 1772) in which Locke applies his theories of the self and the mind to approaches to education and The state of the prisons in England and Wales: with preliminary observations and an account of some foreign prisons and hospitals (1784) by the English philanthropist and prison reformer John Howard, detailing his findings after visiting several hundred prisons across England, Scotland and Wales, in a series of reports, maps and plans.

The 19th Century Collection of books published 1800-1899, is broad in subject coverage but English literature is well-represented with works by such authors as R. Browning, A. Tennyson, D.G. Rossetti, C. Dickens, G. Crabbe, C.A. Swinburne, G. Meredith, R. Kipling and G. Eliot in the collection, as well as works by some lesser-known nineteenth-century writers and some nineteenth-century editions of earlier works.The collection includes first editions of Lewis Carroll's last novel for children, Sylvia and Bruno (1899), and of The Hunting of the Snark (1876). There is also local history material, such as local auction catalogues and C. Hindley's The history of the Catnach Press: at Berwick-upon-Tweed, Alnwick, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in Northumberland, and Seven Dials, London (1887) and some general history, natural history, travel accounts and nineteenth-century editions of Ancient Greek and Latin classical works.