Briggs, Julia, 1943-2007

"Dear Ms Briggs, Thank you for your letter of 3.9.85. I was most interested to learn of your researches and hope that they bear fruit. It is some time now since I read DLM's biography of Nesbit so that I cannot remember how far on its face of matters it seemed to offer scope for further interrogation or divergent interpretation, so I wonder what direction you see your work taking in relation to this?..."

"Dear Miss Briggs, Twice a week I come in to read and answer Berta Ruck's letters. At 99 she is remarkably fit, mentally and physically, but her handwriting tends to sprawl over the page, so it is far easier for me to do her letters. You couldn't have picked a better character to ask Mrs. Oliver about than E. Nesbit. From time to time she reminisces to me at great length about E. Nesbit and her daughter..."

"Dear Ms Briggs Thank you for your letter of 5 April; it seems odd that I should come from Oxford to Birmingham to receive it. I enclose a photocopy of the relevant page from the King Edward's School Staff Register for the early part of this century..."

Consists of a mixture of materials that belonged to Edith Nesbit, her biographers (Doris Langley Moore and Julia Briggs), her daughter-in-law Gertrude Bland, and others. Includes correspondence, work product, original manuscripts, artifacts, photographs, clipping albums, oversized artwork, and a wooden writing case.

"Dear Julia, Many, many apologies for not replying sooner, but a lot of circumstances, as well as my own inefficiencies, have contributed to my being incommunicado for a bit. Between getting back to England much later than I had hoped (Nov) and then spending 3 1/2 weeks looking for a flat (which as you can see I found), and the fact that Lincoln was very inefficient about my mail, things have been very disorganized; especially, unfortunately, my thesis..."