Posted on 16 Jan 2014

Look At These Incredible Original Manuscripts By Da Vinci, Mozart, Jane Austen And More

Last year the British Library announced it was putting millions of incredible photos on Flickr that would have eventually been lost to time. Here we celebrate some of the most stunning items from another of its collections: "Turning the Pages".

by Alan White

BuzzFeed News Reporter, UK

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Look At These Incredible Original Manuscripts By Da Vinci, Mozart, Jane Austen And More

One of the most beautiful items in the collection is Lewis Carroll's original manuscript for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, from 1864.

He wrote the book after entertaining the daughter of a friend on a boat trip with the story.

She asked him to write it down for her, and several months later, he had.

There's also this assortment of notes and drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci (1508).

As the BL curators point out, it moves from right to left in Leonardo's well-known "mirror writing".

There's also this History of England, which was written by Jane Austen when she was 15 year old.

Typically of Austen, it's actually a parody, making fun of schoolroom books of the time.

She says she's a "partial prejudiced and ignorant Historian".

These are Mozart's compositions from the last seven years of his life.

He wrote some of his most famous music in those years.

At the time he was suffering family tragedy and financial crisis. He made his last entry three years before he died.

Also in the Library is De Humani Corporis Fabrica, one of the most influential works in Western medicine.

It was written by 28-year-old Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), a professor at the University of Padua.

He created the science of modern anatomy with this book.

Look At These Incredible Original Manuscripts By Da Vinci, Mozart, Jane Austen And More

One of the most beautiful items in the collection is Lewis Carroll's original manuscript for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, from 1864.

He wrote the book after entertaining the daughter of a friend on a boat trip with the story.

She asked him to write it down for her, and several months later, he had.

There's also this assortment of notes and drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci (1508).

As the BL curators point out, it moves from right to left in Leonardo's well-known "mirror writing".

There's also this History of England, which was written by Jane Austen when she was 15 year old.

Typically of Austen, it's actually a parody, making fun of schoolroom books of the time.

She says she's a "partial prejudiced and ignorant Historian".

These are Mozart's compositions from the last seven years of his life.

He wrote some of his most famous music in those years.

At the time he was suffering family tragedy and financial crisis. He made his last entry three years before he died.

Also in the Library is De Humani Corporis Fabrica, one of the most influential works in Western medicine.

It was written by 28-year-old Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), a professor at the University of Padua.

He created the science of modern anatomy with this book.

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