Two volumes of letters from George Washington bought by a Dundee jute magnate more than 80 years ago will be handed back to the US by First Minister Alex Salmond.
Mr Salmond is on a week-long trip to the United States and will loan the books to a new library dedicated to the country’s first president.
The two volumes date from 1795 and are titled “Official Letters to the Honorable American Congress, Written, During the War between the United Colonies and Great Britain, by His Excellency, George Washington, Commander in Chief of the Continental Forces.”
They were bought by Dundee jute magnate Hugh Sharp and have been in Scotland since the 1930s.
The American dealer who sold the volumes to Mr Sharp had described them as “the finest books from Washington’s library”.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “First Minister Alex Salmond is on a visit to the US that will focus on encouraging economic investment in Scotland.”
He will also visit Washington’s former home, where he will present historic volumes of books from the National Library of Scotland.
“They are being loaned to the Fred W Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington,” said the spokesman.
Hugh Sharp was born in 1897 and died in a railway accident in 1937. His private library was collected during the last eight years of his life and presented to the National Library of Scotland by his mother and sister in 1938.
Sharp’s collection also includes the first complete edition of the works of Chaucer from 1532, from the library of Lord Hastings, and a copy of the first edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost from 1667.