Leonard Woolf Letters: Finding Aid
Processed by The Huntington Library staff in 1976; supplementary encoding and revision supplied by Brooke Dykman Dockter and
Diann Benti.
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Title: Leonard Woolf Letters
Dates (inclusive): 1900-1918
Collection Number: mssHM 42119-42183
Creator:
Woolf, Leonard, 1880-1969.
Extent:
67 pieces in 1 box
Repository:
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Manuscripts Department
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, California 91108
Phone: (626) 405-2191
Email: reference@huntington.org
URL: http://www.huntington.org
Abstract: The collection consists primarily of letters from English writer Leonard Woolf (1880-1969) to college roommate and friend
Saxon Sydney-Turner,
including thirty-eight letters date from Woolf's college days at the University Cambridge, twenty-two are from the period
when Woolf served as a civil servant in Sri Lanka,
and four letters date from the period after his return to England in 1911. One letter was written from Spain during his honeymoon
with his wife, Virginia Woolf.
Although most of the letters do not concern literary matters, there are two poems by Woolf in the collection: "2:30 A.M."
and "To Ponamma."
Language: English.
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[Identification of item]. Leonard Woolf Letters, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
Purchased from Sotheby's, December 13, 1975.
Leonard Sidney Woolf (1880-1969) was an English author, political essayist, and social reformer. He was a member of the Bloomsbury
group--a group of friends, writers, artists, and intellectuals.
He was married to author and fellow Bloomsbury member Virginia Woolf.
Letters from English writer Leonard Woolf to Saxon Arnold Sydney-Turner, a college roommate and friend and one of the group
of "Apostles" at Cambridge. The letters tell of Woolf's
activities and projects while on vacation from Cambridge, of his life as a Civil Servant in Sri Lanka, and a few treat the
period after his return to England.
Thirty-eight letters date from Woolf's college days at Cambridge and they treat a variety of scholastic subjects (his reading
of Plato, Byron etc.) on which he was
working during his vacations. Lytton Strachey is mentioned frequently in the letters as some incident concerning him or a
fragment of a letter from him is reported.
Twenty-two letters date from the period when Woolf served as a Civil Servant in Sri Lanka and they are written from a number
of cities and remote outposts throughout the country
(Jaffna, Kandy, Hanbantota, Marichchukkadi etc.). Woolf describes with humor his life in Sri Lanka, especially the change
in the state of his mind brought on by the
long hours of work, the heat, and the isolation from the kind of society he had been used to. Among other things, he describes
a public hanging, a meeting of a local
Shakespeare society, and his experience of becoming ill in a remote village on one of his circuits of the territory.
Four letters date from the period after his return to England in 1911. One letter was written from Spain during his honeymoon
there, describing his and
Virginia's efforts to communicate with the locals and the omnipresent smell of "stale urine"
Most of the letters do not concern literary matters.
There are two poems by Woolf contained in the letters:
- 1) "2:30 AM" in a letter dated Apr. 17, 1901 (HM 42126)
- 2) "To Ponamma" in a letter dated June 12, 1910 (HM 42179)
A "chronological list of mystics", written during Woolf's school days groups various "mystics" by time and nationality. (HM
42119)
Related materials in the Huntington Library
Items are arranged in chronological order.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the
Huntington Library's Online Catalog.
Strachey, Lytton, 1880-1932.
Woolf, Leonard, 1880-1969 -- Archives.
Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941.
University of Cambridge -- Students -- Correspondence.
Sri Lanka -- Description and travel.
Sri Lanka -- Social life and customs -- 19th century.
Letters (correspondence) -- Great Britain -- 20th century.
Letters (correspondence) -- Sri Lanka -- 20th century.
Poems -- Great Britain -- 20th century.
Poems -- Sri Lanka -- 20th century.
Sydney-Turner, Saxon, correspondent.
Box 1
Correspondence and documents
HM 42181. Leonard Sidney Woolf note to Saxon Arnold Sydney-Turner. [1911 October 6]