The Department of Manuscripts and Printed books houses world-class collections fit for a National Library under the roof of a fine arts museum.

They range from early printed books to modern literary autographs, including works by Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf, from the archives of novelists and poets to the correspondence of painters and composers, from autograph scores by Handel and Elgar to early printed music, and from ninth-century Byzantine Gospel Books to Persian miniatures and to some of the finest medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in existence.