There are some interesting articles here:
Essays on the History of Astronomy by Helen Sawyer Hogg
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/astrobib/outofoldbooks.htm
Von Humboldt’s Account of the Magellanic Clouds
Halley’s List of Nebulous Objects
Catalogues of Nebulous Objects in the Eighteenth Century
The Early Discovery of Four Globular Clusters
Jean Sylvain Bailly, the Guillotined Astronomer