After Austen Henry Layard excavated the remains of Assyrian palaces between 1845 and 1847, there was great public appetite for more information about the newly unearthed artefacts, particularly because many believed that these discoveries confirmed history as described in the Bible.

Layard wrote a lavishly illustrated work, 'Nineveh and its remains', which was published by John Murray in 1849. Despite its title, the discoveries in this work mostly relate to the city of Nimrud - Layard had misidentified it as Nineveh, but he later confirmed a second site as the city of Nineveh. Regardless, the book was instantly popular.

This series includes the incomplete manuscript for that work, as well as heavily annotated proofs, which give great insight into the publication process. In addition, there are transcriptions of Akkadian cuneiform that decorated artefacts discovered by Layard.