Collections

Correspondence and manuscripts. The collection includes manuscript drafts and typescripts of two volumes of his autobiography: THE OLD CENTURY AND SEVEN MORE YEARS, 1938; and THE WEALD OF YOUTH, 1942. There are also 13 volumes of early notebooks for the period 1894 until 1909 (from age 8 to 22) containing drafts of over 200 poems, 19 short stories and many drawings. There is some correspondence about the autobiography. Also includes 21 letters from Arnold Bennett, 51 letters from Lady Ottoline Morrell, 26 letters from H.M. Tomlinson, 19 letters from Sassoon to his mother-in-law, Lady Gatty, 22 letters from Sassoon to his son, letters from many others, and a typescript of his poem "A love affair" with holograph note

Correspondence, manuscript, and drawings relating to English and American literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries collected by Solton (1896-1961) and Julia (-1984) Engel. Ten letters and four manuscripts of poems by Rudyard Kipling form the largest unit within the collection. Prominent among the other items are the manuscript of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Mock Trial" and two Walt Whitman letters, a copy of R. W. Emerson's famous "Leaves of Grass" letter in Whitman's hand and Whitman's letter to Conway regarding the Emerson letter. Also included is a letter from James Fenimore Cooper to Mary Rutherfurd Clarkson Jay, wife of Peter Augustus Jay. Thirty-one of the drawings in the collection are by William Wallace Denslow and John Rae Neill and represent illustrations done for various works by L. Frank Baum. There are also two drawings of Gelett Burgess, one ot "The Goop" and the other of "The Purple Cow." Castings of the obverse and reverse of the bronze Kipling medallion commissioned by Engel in 1953 from Julio Kilenyi are stored in 2 oversize boxes. Most of the items in this collection relate to a collection of first editions which was also presented to the Libraries by Mr. and Mrs. Engel.

The collection contains letters and manuscripts by and relating to Wilfred Owen, including seven letters (Nov. 5, 1917 to Oct. 10, 1918) written by Owen to Siegfried L. Sassoon (1886-1967) (English war poet, writer, and soldier). Additional correspondence includes 22 letters from the poet's mother, Mrs. Susan Owen to Sassoon (1921-1933); 28 letters written by the poet's brother, Harold Owen to Sassoon (1921-1966); one letter written by the poet's cousin, Leslie Gunston, to Sassoon (1921), and one letter (1930) to Edmund C. Blunden (1896-1974) (English poet, author and critic). There are also three letters from the Wilfred Owen scholar, Dennis S.R. Welland, to Siegfried Sassoon (1950). Finally, the collection holds one letter from Ian M. Parsons a partner at Chatto and Windus and one letter from the editor John Bell of Oxford University Press to Siegfried Sassoon (1946 and 1965).