Louis Umfreville Wilkinson:

An Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center

Biographical Sketch

Louis Umfreville Wilkinson was born in 1881, the only son of a clergyman. He attended Radley School where he struck up a correspondence with Oscar Wilde, then imprisoned in Reading Goal. He attended Oxford for four semesters before being "sent down" for blasphemousness in 1901. He next went to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his degree and published his first novel in 1905. Also at Cambridge he made a group of lifelong friends including Llewelyn Powys, J.C. Squire, Ronald Storrs, and Ralph Strauss. Powys' two brothers, John Cowper and Theodore Francis, also became close friends.

Throughout his life Wilkinson wrote autobiographical and satirical novels, publishing them under the pseudonym Louis Marlow. He supported himself largely through writing, though he also took to the lecture circuit on occasion. He was married four times and upon his death in 1966 he had two surviving children.

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Scope and Contents

Sixty-seven holograph notebooks chiefly relating to his published fiction and non-fiction make up the bulk of the Louis Wilkinson Collection, 1916-1958. The collection is organized into three series: Series I. Works, 1934-1952 (2 boxes); Series II. Aleister Crowley's Estate, 1947-1960 (2 folders); and Series III. Notebooks, 1916-1958 (5 boxes).

Series I contains typescripts and page proofs for The Devil in Crystal, Forth, Beast!, Seven Friends, and Welsh Ambassadors. Also present are galley proofs for The Letters of Llewelyn Powys. Representing Wilkinson's biography of Lord George Sackville, Sackville of Drayton, are typescripts, page and galley proofs, drafts of the appendix and indices, and correspondence regarding publication of the book. Correspondents are listed in the Index of Correspondence at the end of this guide.

The second series is composed of correspondence regarding Wilkinson's duties as an executor of Aleister Crowley's estate. All correspondents are listed in the Index of Correspondence at the end of this guide.

Series III contains 67 notebooks in which Wilkinson wrote drafts for his novels, drafted letters, jotted down lines of poetry, and noted shopping and expense lists. The notebooks have been listed under the titles to which they chiefly relate, where possible. Notebooks that do not contain identifiable titles have been placed at the end of the collection.

Other materials associated with Louis Wilkinson may be found in the following manuscript collections at the Ransom Center:

• British Sexological Society
• Bennet, Arnold
• Crowley, Aleister
• Dick, Kay
• Harris, Frank
• Hopkins, Kenneth
• Lehmann, John
• Meredith, George
• Morrell, Ottoline Violet
• Anne, Lady
• PEN
• Powys, John Cowper
• Powys, Llewelyn
• Powys, Theodore Francis
• Shaw, George Bernard
• Symons, Alphonse James
• Albert

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Restrictions

Access:

Open for research

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Administrative Information

Acquisition:

Purchases, 1967-77 (R3456, R7675)

Processed by:

Chelsea S. Dinsmore, 2002

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Louis Wilkinson Collection--Folder List

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 Louis Wilkinson Collection--Index of Correspondents 

Names in bold appear in the RLIN record.

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