William Douglas Robson-Scott:

A Preliminary Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Center

Scope and Contents

The bulk of the William Robson-Scott Papers consists of approximately 500 letters (1903-1980) sent to Robson-Scott by friends and family, most of them handwritten. Also present is a small amount of correspondence to his wife Elaine. A very few letters were written by Robson-Scott himself, the majority of which were to H. D. Ziman and Harry Bergholtz. Some letters, especially among the group of family correspondence, were between third-parties related to or associated with Robson-Scott. A small amount of correspondence is in Dutch and German and/or professionally-related. Notable correspondents include Christopher Isherwood, Sybille Bedford and her partner Eda Lord, John Lloyd, Darsie Gillie, George Rink, and Adrian Stokes.

Among the Eda Lord letters are three photographs of, presumably, Lord at various exotic locations. In the folder of Robson-Scott letters to Ziman and Bergholtz are a typescript of three lightly-edited poems by Robson-Scott and a carbon-copy draft of a Robson-Scott obituary by an unknown author.

The collection arrived at the Ransom Center in 2010 grouped by correspondents and in rough chronological order within these groups. During accessioning, the existing groups were retained, with most of the original folder titles transferred to new folders. The chronological order within each group was corrected when necessary. Although some of the earlier correspondence is on acidic and fragile paper and some letters have seen rough treatment, all of the materials are in relatively good condition.

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Restrictions

Access:

Open for research

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Administrative Information

Acquisition:

Purchase, 2010 (2009-12-01-P)

Processed by:

Stephen Cooper, 2010

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Container List

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