Box 2

"Dear Mrs Moore, Excuse my writing in pencil. I am in bed with a bad attack of influenza living on barley water which my [?] kind wife sends a large jug every day. My landlady is in hospital with gastric ulcers and her son is only here at night leaving at 8.30 a.m. every morning..."

"My dear Mrs Moore, I do not know whether these loose sheets will be of any use to you and though I have tried all day to put them in order I have wholly failed having I fear left my glasses at John's flat and as he went off to Cambridge that night I shall have to wait until I hope he will discover and send them to me as I am almost helpless without them..."

"Dear Miss Bemrose, I am extremely sorry that I can get no information from Mrs. Thorndike, except that she and the family knew E. Nesbit for nearly 20 years, and regarded her with the greatest affection and interest..."

"Dear Madam, In reply to your letter Dame Sybil will not be back in England for six or eight months..."

"Dear Miss Langley Moore, In reply to your letter, the initials of Mrs. Thorndike are A.M..."

"Dear Julia, I like it - it's well researched (look at those notes!), soundly structured, and written with sensitivity and humour. It's informative and enjoyable..."

"Dear Julia, Your letters terrify me because they corner me on references. Were you to open up a challenge on some philosophical or aesthetic matter, I could perhaps respond - but references silence me..."

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, (yes, I think we may) Thanks for returning the letter - here is another I came across after you'd left (you needn't return it as it's a copy of a copy). I also very much enjoyed our talk, though I'm distraught at the "preface and book" comment being so unsupported..."

"Dear Mrs Moore, Very many thanks for the Biography. I think you have written a very readable book, and have made a very just estimate of E B's character and ability. She was a strange mixture of altruism and egotism, of great generosity and funny vanity..."