At Dr. Williams's Library, London
The Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Henry Crabb
Robinson (1762-1867) preserved at Dr. Williams's Library,
London, is one of the most important literary archives of
the late eighteenth to mid nineteenth century.
It spans Crabb Robinson's long life and includes his
prolific correspondence with many of the leading literary,
artistic, scientific and political figures of the day.
The collection documents in detail Crabb Robinson's
extraordinarily wide-ranging cultural interests and provides
a unique contemporary insight into the lives and works of
many of Europe's most famous figures during the first
half of the nineteenth century including Browning, Byron,
Carlyle, Coleridge, Dickens, Goethe, Mary and Percy Shelley,
Tennyson and many others.
The collection consists of holograph letters, together with
note-books, copy letters and miscellaneous papers currently
housed in 32 guard-mounted volumes and 15 bundles or packets
of loose documents whose condition is such that they are not
easily made available for research.
A number of attempts have been made to describe this valuable
corpus of material amongst whom mention may be made of the
following: Professor Edith J. Morley, who produced a three-volume
descriptive work on Crabb Robinson in 1938; Inez Elliott,
who produced an Index to HCR's Letters in Dr. Williams's
Library in 1960; Professor Dr. Berthe Marquardt, who produced
two volumes on Crabb Robinson's German correspondents,
the second of which was published posthumously in 1967; and
John Creasey, the former Librarian, who produced a terse calendar
of the collection.
However, none of the foregoing represents a full catalogue
of its contents. Recently Jane Gunn spent some eight months
conducting a survey of the collection, in order to assess
its overall content and size and suitability for preservation
microfilming and digitisation .
The entire collection will be made available on 35mm silver
positive microfilms and as digital images on CD-ROMs.
The title will be available to subscribers at a special pre-publication
price.
This special offer price will depend on the total number
of pre-publication orders received prior to the publication
date of June 2005.
Interested purchasers are invited to register their interest
by email us quoting the
name of their purchasing institution/library.
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