Box 1

"Many thanks for your card and the note from Stephanie West, returned herewith. No, I think the Petrie idea wildly implausible - none of his contemporaries would have described him as "pale and kindly"!!! He was irascible, opinionated, strong-willed, hyperactive, and, when young, handsome in a rather saturnine way (he became patriarchal later)..."

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 Miss Briggs, Christopher Lloyd has given me a copy of your letter about Hugh Bellingham Smith. We did not know that he had engraved on wood. Would you like to bring the portrait round one day..."

"Dear Mrs. Briggs, Thank you very much for your letter arguing about Hugh Bellingham Smith. I was sorry to be so long in replying, but I am at present on sabbatical only check my post intermittently..."

"Dear Miss Briggs, I regret to say that none of my leads has been able to help over Hugh Bellingham-Smith and my recollections of seeing his work in someone's flat, if correct, are of no practical use since the three people's in whose London base that might have been the case know nothing of him..."

"Dear Mrs. Moore: I am filming all day and flying at night. Could you come down to the theatre at 8.15 any day I have a chat..."

"Dear Madam, In reply to your letter of yesterday we suggest you write to Mssrs. Dent, who published..."

"Dear Madam, I have to thank you for your letter of the 8th inst., and the copy of Sir Walter Besant's letter which you enclosed and which I now return..."

Due to the filing system Doris Langley Moore kept, these letters are glued together in a manner that is impossible to separate without permanent damage.

Item is a transcribed copy of the letter.