The Horblit Phillipps collection contains 558 separate titles published at Phillipps' Middle Hill Press (Series I) along with several thousand corrected proofs and supporting letters and manuscripts and 30 catalogs, mainly in manuscript, relating to his collection and created between 1816 and 1872. The prints, drawings and photographs (Series II) document Phillipps and members of his family, and also include views of his estates as well as drawings and engraved illustrations of churches, monuments and old houses in the village of Broadway and in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. The almanacs and diaries (Series III) include those kept for the years 1814 to 1866 along with 14 others kept by his wife and daugher at various times between 1821 and 1844, including those of Henrietta Halliwell-Phillipps. The James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps material (Series IV) contains about 20 books and pamphlets by or about the scholar, including those relating to professional controversies in which he was involved. Among the auction and bookseller catalogs (Series V) are those for sales of important individual libraries as well as those of smaller sales that contained material of interest to Phillipps. There are over 1,200 catalogs issued by the firm of Puttick and Simpson between the years 1845 and 1872; many have Phillipps' own markings. Manuscripts associated with the Bibliotheca Phillippica (Series VI) include inventories of Phillipps' manuscripts prepared in 1872 by Edward Bond, Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum, that supplement the printed catalog prepared under the direction of Sir Thomas and bring the total number of entries to 25,365. Among items associated with Phillipps' personal life (Series VII) are: Grant of Arms obtained by Phillipps in 1821 and the Altered Grant of Arms (1857) as well as his armorial bookplate and magnifying glass and seal. This series includes the manuscript of his friend Robert Curzon entitled Libraries of the Levant: notes of some of the original libraries in the Levant where manuscripts still exist. Curzon presented this to Phillipps in 1837; an expanded version formed the basis of his book Visits to monasteries in the Levant (1849). The photographs (Series VIII) include daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and photographs. The Horblit finding aids are accompanied by various lists and bibliographies created at various times between 1946 and 1997 by Harrison D. Horblit, rare book dealers, and the Grolier Club. The Phillipps material purchased at the Sotheby's auction of December 2, 2003 includes: Sir Thomas Phillipps' autograph account book for the period 1819-1870 (Series V); letters, bills, maps, plans and contracts relating to Middle Hill and other properties (Series II); his will dated 1863 (Series III); a record of the number of copies of titles printed at the Middle Hill Press and his Improved numeration table of 1829 (Series VI). Other manuscript material includes the draft of his letter about the forgeries of Constantine Simonides and his copy of Joseph Hunter's letter about James Orchard Halliwell (Series IV). Also: three large wooden crates containing ca. 5,000 fragments of English documents dating from 1300 to 1800, with the bulk belonging to the eighteenth century (Series VI); genealogical material includes a volume of printed pedigrees, Dugdale's Baronage, Henry St. George's Visitatio Wiltoniae and pedigrees collected by John Mellersh of Bath, England (Series I).
