From 21 March to 4 October 2026, visitors can explore House of Stories: Tales from the Chatsworth Library, a new exhibition bringing together some of the most significant items from the Chatsworth Library and archive for the first time.
First editions, original manuscripts, letters, scrapbooks, and drawings connect literary and artistic lineages, and take visitors into tales surrounding great works of literature.
In this blog series, we explore some of the works on display.
We use platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo to display videos. These require the use of cookies, for which we need your consent. To watch this video, please click here to allow cookies.
Handbook of Chatsworth and Hardwick, by William Spencer Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire
The 6th Duke of Devonshire was greatly interested in the history of his family and of Chatsworth, and in 1845 he published his Handbook of Chatsworth and Hardwick. It was privately printed and intended primarily for family and close friends. It remained the only full-length account of Chatsworth House for many years.
The Handbook is lively and unashamedly subjective. It takes the form of a personal letter to his sister, Harriet, Countess Granville. Reading it feels like touring the house in his company, as he reflects on rooms, acquisitions, and the transformations he made with warmth, wit and affection for his home and its collections.
He opens 'Dearest Harriet…my plan is to suppose that you are just arrived, and that I show you every room and corner of the house' – a house they had both known and loved since infancy.
The Duke took great care over the production of the Handbook, and was keen to ensure it was accurate. He had assistance in preparing it from his librarian, John Payne Collier, a respected Shakespearian scholar, who is now perhaps best remembered as a forger: his most significant act of forgery was his claim to have discovered a copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio of 1632 with extensive corrections in a mid 17th-century hand (which were ultimately proved to have been written by Payne Collier himself).
The Folio (now in the Huntington Library in the US) was presented to the Duke of Devonshire. The Duke never knew about his librarian’s alternative career as his forgeries were not definitively proved until after his death – and he certainly relied heavily on his employee while the Handbook was being drafted. The manuscript from which it was printed was a transcript of the text in Collier’s hand.
The Duke gave copies of the Handbook to close relatives and family friends only, and urged the recipients to treat it ‘as private as a letter’. However, he did show it to others, and he lent copies to various literary acquaintances.
The poet and critic Leigh Hunt read it through in detail and made numerous annotations in the margins, generally in praise of the Duke’s writings – this annotated copy of the Handbook is still in the collection today.
Charles Dickens was also loaned a copy, and wrote in praise of the Duke’s writing style, noting that ‘some things in it…would require a very nice art to do as well in fiction. The little suggestive indications of some of the old servants and rooms – and the childish associations – are perfect little pieces of truth’. This letter remains in the archive and is on display as part of the House of Stories exhibition.
Author and friend, Caroline Norton, delighted in its ‘tenderness, & quaint gentle pleasantries, and wit, and anecdote’, calling it ‘the perfection of the gossip style’, and commenting that ‘I felt as if I was stroked with feathers all the time I read it’. This letter is also on display as part of the exhibition.
It is believed that as few as 12 copies in the smaller, octavo size were printed, along with two large paper copies – both of which are preserved in the archives.
One of them was expanded into a six-volume copy, also featured in the exhibition. The other was donated by the grandson of John Payne Collier. In it, Collier had written a note indicating that the Duke had arranged for the large paper copies to be printed ‘with a view to occupying the margins by drawings of objects, persons and places, but his health & interest failed and the design was never carried out.’ This is borne out by a letter written by the Duke himself, who mentioned that ‘there are many persons I should like to employ in illuminating one’.
This practice of extra-illustration involved having a book printed or mounted on large sheets of paper, and then interleaving the pages of text with engravings, watercolours, and other material – a way of making an ordinary printed book into something truly unique.
Fortunately, the 6th Duke's great-niece, Lady Louisa Egerton (1835-1907), daughter of the 7th Duke, took up the task a few decades after the Duke passed, incorporating watercolours, engravings, pen and ink sketches and more.
Image above: Lady Louisa Caroline Egerton (née Cavendish) by Camille Silvy, albumen print, 13 May 1861
NPG Ax52998
Lady Louisa was highly knowledgeable about the family’s collections and took the family’s responsibility for their care seriously. While she wanted the house to feel like a home and for its artworks to be enjoyed, she also recognised the need for careful preservation, expressing particular concern, for example, about the risk of light damage to some of the Old Master drawings.
She was proactive in seeking external professional and scholarly advice, and worked closely with figures such as Sir James Lacaita, who produced the first published catalogue of Chatsworth’s Library in 1879. She also frequently handled enquiries from researchers requesting information or access to the collections – much like the work undertaken by Chatsworth’s Collections team today.
Her project to illustrate the Handbook reflects her love and deep knowledge of the collections, and she clearly relished the work; in a letter of 1894, she referred to it as ‘my pleasant and entertaining work for many years’.
She interleaved the text with watercolours, sketches and engravings. Some of the watercolours were originals by William Henry Hunt, an artist the Duke commissioned to document Chatsworth for him in the 1820s; however, by the time Lady Louisa was working, many of these pictures had been framed and hung, so instead she made her own copies of Hunt’s works.
She augmented these with some highly accomplished watercolours of her own. She was also aware of Chatsworth’s status as a popular visitor attraction, writing ‘In the illustrated copy of the handbook which was my pleasant and entertaining work for many years I have made little sketches…which will help in the identification so dear to the hearts of most British sightseers’. Her pen and ink sketches of picture hangs in different spaces bring the Duke’s text to life visually – showing us where individual works of art were placed in the Duke’s day.
Lady Louisa was inspired to create a Handbook of her own – bringing her great-uncle’s work up to date by recording how things had changed since he was writing in the 1840s. She started work in 1894, making it clear in the preface how significant the Duke’s work was to her: she hoped his Handbook ‘may continue to future generations to be the help [and] interest which it has been to me for over 30 years.’
Sadly, her Handbook never got fully underway – it is brief and unfinished. However, a generation later, Duchess Evelyn (1870-1960) also responded to the Handbook, starting work in 1924 on her own revised book, which survives in four manuscript notebooks in the archives today.
The Handbook therefore, sparked a rich tradition of written responses from female family members, and Duchess Deborah’s The House can be seen as a continuation of this tradition.
The six-volume extra-illustrated copy of the Handbook compiled by Lady Louisa remains one of Chatsworth's great treasures and an important record of the house and collections during the 6th Duke's tenure.
About the exhibition
House of Stories: Tales from the Chatsworth Library runs from 21 March to 4 October 2026.
Artefacts, artworks, and furniture connected to the exhibition are on display throughout the house at various points on the visitor route.
Access to the exhibition is included with all house and garden tickets; you do not need a separate ticket.
House of Stories is supported by Sotheby’s, Chatsworth’s Arts and Exhibitions Partner.
All income from ticket sales and Gift Aid is reinvested in Chatsworth by the Chatsworth House Trust charity.
