James Lees-Milne papers, 1907-1997
Title:
James Lees-Milne papers 1907-1997
The James Lees-Milne Papers contain correspondence, writings, and other papers of the author. The papers span the years 1907-1997, with the bulk falling between 1930-1997. Series I, Correspondence, is the most extensive, and documents Lees-Milne's relationships with a wide circle of close friends, social and literary acquaintances, publishers, the National Trust, his family and his wife's family. The majority of correspondents are members of the British aristocracy and of Britain's literary elite. Among his most frequent correspondents were John Betjeman, John Spencer Churchill, Patrick Kinross, Edward Sackville-West, Sacheverell Sitwell, James Pope-Hennessy, Harold Nicolson, Rosamond Lehmann, Anne Hill (Lady Anne Gathorne-Hardy), Diana (Mitford) Mosley, Eardley Knollys, John Kenworthy-Browne, Richard Stewart-Jones and Stuart Preston. Other correspondents include Ivy Compton-Burnett, Elspeth Huxley, Lady Kathleen Kennett (widow of Admiral Scott), Alan Pryce-Jones, his literary executor Michael Bloch, and many other literary friends, nobility, and prominent figures in the arts. Series II, Writings, contains manuscripts, contracts, background research material, and reviews of Lees-Milne's published diaries, writings on architectural history, biographies, novels, memoirs, and shorter works such as magazine articles and obituaries. Manuscripts for the earlier diaries are not present; for 1946-47 and 1953-78, there are corrected typescripts that contain material not included in the published versions. The most extensive background material is for Lees-Milne's two-volume biography of Harold Nicolson: this includes a small body of Nicolson's correspondence to his secretary, business associates, several friends, including Leonard and Virginia Woolf, and his wife Vita Sackville-West. Background material for Lees-Milne's The Age of Inigo Jones includes one of the pocket notebooks he carried with him on visits to National Trust properties in the 1940s. Series III, Other Papers, contains certificates, invitations, a list of books read 1962-96, ephemera, which includes a bookplate showing the Lees-Milne coat of arms, and clippings. The majority of the clippings are obituaries of Lees-Milne's friends and family, but also present are interviews with and profiles of Lees-Milne himself, articles about the National Trust, about architecture and historic preservation, and about friends. Series IV, Photographs, contains snapshots of Lees-Milne and his family and friends from his childhood through the 1980s.
ArchivalResource:
Total Boxes: 30; Linear Feet: 14.01; Other Storage Formats: cold storage
http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/beinecke.leesmil View
View in SNAC
