CAMBRIDGE - The rumour had been that the books and papers lodged in Cambridge University's library tower were little more than pornography.

But for the first time the university is set to reveal that the 170,000 books and papers previously consigned to the tower for being too populist and lowbrow to be of academic interest contain unique literary gems.

An entire social history is recorded in assorted cookbooks, photo albums, school registers and cheap novels known as penny dreadfuls, which will now be available to the public.

There are also first edition novels by authors such as Charles Dickens, Henry James and Sir Walter Scott.

The first online catalogue of these books is to be created thanks to a US$1 million ($1.56 million) grant from the foundation of the late American philanthropist Andrew W. Mellon.

Jim Secord, a professor of the history of science who has explored the contents of the tower, said: "In most places, history is buried. You think of history being under the ground.

"In Cambridge, the main body of history has always been looming above the town in this big Stalinist building of eight or nine storeys. It's always had this mass of hidden history inside."

The collection includes popular Victorian and early 20th-century novels with beguiling titles such as Tempted of the Devil, Love Affairs of a Curate, and Only a Village Maiden (which, despite the implications, has an entirely innocent content).

As the definition of academic in the 19th century was very restricted, it also covers translations of foreign and classical literature and authors not studied at Cambridge.

Among these are valuable first editions of novels by Arthur Conan Doyle and the three women of the Brontë family, including works published under their pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Some of the works have never been read and are in mint condition.

However, as their existence was recorded only in increasingly illegible hand-written catalogues with no keyword search facility, most of the material has been invisible to scholars.

Secord said: "The bulk of it still hasn't been touched. The typical book in there that you order up hasn't really been looked at before.

"When you go in to use the collection, you put in your slip and have the librarian bring up the paper knife so you can cut open the pages."

One colleague who had been researching the Religious Tract Society, which was founded in 1799 for the dissemination of Christian literature, discovered everything that she needed for her work in the tower.

"There were 120 books all in original bindings," Secord said.

And for his own research, which included an investigation of the 19th-century public's understanding of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, Secord discovered a range of useful material such as sermons, children's books and catalogues for zoos and fairs.