When I visited Cambridge in 1992, my research interests were very much focused on William Muir (1846-1938), facsimilist, and the Blake Press at Edmonton. (Keynes had met Muir as well as purchasing some of his facsimiles through Quaritch, bookseller.) I was also acquainted with Ruth Lockwood (1914-2004), formerly Ruth Jasper, who had been Keynes’s theatre sister at Barts, so there was an additional sentimental interest.
In 1992, the contents were still in the corrugated cardboard boxes presumably used to move them from Lammas House, the Keynes residence near Newmarket. It looked to me like the family had just popped round to the Newmarket Tesco for any spare grocery boxes.
Geoffrey Keynes, Donald Fraser and a staff nurse (probably Ruth Jasper), c. 1935.The group are pictured at the foot of a patient's bed (patient not visible) in an unidentified ward.
(Barts Archive, Photograph Collection: SBHX8/1757.)
◆
HOLDING REPOSITORY. Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives.
TITLE. Sir Geoffrey Langdon Keynes: Personal Papers and Correspondence.
SHELF MARK. MS Add.8633.
CREATOR. Sir Geoffrey Langdon Keynes (1887-1982), knight, surgeon, author & bibliophile.
ACQUISITION INFORMATION. Received from the library of Geoffrey Keynes, 1982.
DATES OF CREATION. c. 1906-1982. Unless otherwise stated, Keynes is the author of manuscripts, compiler of scrapbooks, and recipient of letters.
PHYSICAL EXTENT. 34 boxes.
CONDITIONS GOVERNING ACCESS. The contents of box 29 are closed to readers until 2025. The rest of the collection is open for consultation by holders of a Reader’s Ticket valid for the Manuscripts Reading Room.
FINDING AID. A catalogue is available in the Manuscripts Reading Room.
RELATED MATERIAL. Cambridge University Library holds other papers of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, MSS. Add.8828, 8829 and 9350.
CONTEXT. Geoffrey Langdon Keynes, surgeon, bibliographer and literary scholar, was born in Cambridge on 25 March 1887, the youngest child of John Neville Keynes, the registrar of Cambridge University, and his wife Florence (née Brown). There were two older siblings, John Maynard and Margaret Neville.
Geoffrey Keynes was educated at St Faith’s Preparatory School, Cambridge, then at Rugby, where he was a close friend of Rupert Brooke. He went on to become a foundation scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he secured a first in the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1909.
Keynes won an open scholarship to St Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1910, qualifying with a Conjoint Diploma (FRCS and LRCP) in 1913. He went on to take MD in 1918 and final FRCS in 1920.
On the outbreak of World War I, Keynes joined the Royal Army Medical Corps as a surgeon specialist.
It was near impossible to store blood on the Western Front, so a patient-to-patient method of blood transfusion was preferred. A portable apparatus, with a special device in the flask for regulating blood flow, was designed and pioneered by Lieutenant Geoffrey Keynes. In 1921 Keynes co-founded London’s Blood Transfusion Service, and a year later published Britain’s first textbook on the subject.
The Keynes apparatus for blood transfusion.
After the war he became part of the surgical team at Barts, where he was appointed assistant surgeon in 1928. In a series of papers between 1927 and 1937 Keynes recorded his experiences with irradiation and surgery.
He had married Margaret Elizabeth Darwin, the grand-daughter of Charles Darwin in 1917. They had four sons: Richard Darwin (1919-2010), Quentin George (1921-2003), William Milo (1924-2009); Stephen John (1927 2017). A daughter, Harriet Frances (born 1918), died in infancy.
On the outbreak of war in 1939, Keynes volunteered for the Royal Air Force Medical Service, serving with it until 1945. When demobilised he became full surgeon at Barts, although approaching NHS retiring age. Keynes, however, was given the title of emeritus surgeon, with 12 beds, and continued surgical practice. In this post, he was the first UK surgeon to undertake thymectomy for previously incurable myasthenia gravis.
Keynes was an outstanding surgeon. Seen as less austere and formally dressed than his colleagues, he was a handsome man of tireless energy, though intolerant of the second rate. He finally retired from Barts in 1952, and was made knight bachelor in 1955 in belated recognition of his work.
Keynes combined medical skill with a passion for literature and was an avid bibliophile who had started collecting books during his school days. The notes that follow will give some indication of his literary and bibliographic activities.
Geoffrey Keynes died suddenly on 5 July 1982. Most of his library passed by bequest and purchase to Cambridge University Library.
SCOPE. The majority of boxes, not apparently meeting my research needs at the time, were not examined.
CONTENT. The following list is based on that compiled by Simon D. Keynes, Trinity College (grandson): “Rough list of papers. March 1982”. I transcribed the list and added further notes when I consulted the file in 1992. It has been further tweaked for this blog presentation.
BOX 1:
Typescripts of The Gates of Memory* (“No life is long enough”).
BOX 2:
Typescript of The Gates of Memory; reviews of Gates; letters to Keynes prompted by its publication.
BOX 3:
Original copies of The Enthusiast (schoolboy magazine, see Gates, pp. 31-2), in box; letters from Keynes to his parents, written from Rugby; Rugby School handbooks.
BOXES 4-6:
Envelopes containing letters to Keynes.
BOX 4:
Envelopes containing letters from
Ernest Altounyan (1890-1962), physician; Michael Ayrton (1921-1975), artist; Michael A. Badoo, physician; J. Brian Bamford (1908-1979), physician/Denis F.E. Nash (1913-2000), surgeon; Nicolas Barker, printing historian; William Bateson (1861-1926), biologist; R. Bearman; Esmond de Beer (1895-1990), scholar; John Betjeman (1906-1984), poet; Morchard Bishop (1903-1987), pseudonym of Frederick Field Stoner, otherwise Oliver Stonor, writer; Edmund Blunden (1896-1974), poet, with envelope of pamphlets; Kenneth Brease, botanical painter; archbishop of Canterbury (otherwise unidentified); Sebastian Carter, printer; Louis Chauvois, scientific writer; Lady Sybil Cholmondeley (1894-1989); Sir Sydney Cockerell (1867-1962), museum director; David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford and Balcarres (1900-1975); Harvey Cushing (1869-1939), neurosurgeon; Hugh Dalton (1887-1962), Baron Dalton, politician; Gaius Davies, psychiatrist; Walter de la Mare (1873-1956), poet, letters re R. Brooke; John Dreyfus (1918-2002), book designer & historian of printing; William Sidney, Baron De L’Isle and Dudley (1859–1945); Gordon Evans, medical student; David Findlay; Geoffrey Flavell (1913-1994), surgeon; Capt. C. Ford; Ernest Arthur (“Serge”) Freeman (1900-1975), orthopaedic surgeon; John Farquhar Fulton* (1899-1960), neurophysiologist, and others; David Garnett (1892-1981), writer; Robert Gathorne-Hardy (1902-1973), bookseller & gardener; Denis Geoffroy-Dechaume (1922-2012), painter; Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962), poet/Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959), painter; Philip Gosse (1879–1959), physician; George Armin Goyder (1908-1997), collector; Brian Cecil Guinness (1903-1985); Peter Gurtner, physician.
BOX 5:
Envelopes containing letters from
Sir Rupert Hart-Davis (1907-1999), publisher; Geoffrey Gordon Hartill, physician & surgeon; Christopher Hassall (1912-1963), actor, dramatist, librettist, lyricist, biographer & poet; John Hayward (1905-1965), editor, critic, anthologist & bibliophile; Haro Hodson, cartoonist; James Hubbell; Frank Livingstone Huntley, scholar; John Johnson (1882–1956), printer; Henry James (1843-1916), novelist, with clippings & pamphlets; Richard Jennings; Bent Einer Juel-Jensen (1922-2006), physician & book collector; Piloo Jungalwalla, scholar; Edwin (“Puff”) Kersley, dealer; Leo Kersley (1920-2012), dancer; Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer (1906-1969), biographer & historian; Peter King; Kenneth J. Kingsbury, surgeon; R. Le Page; Wilmarth Sheldon “Lefty” Lewis (1895–1979), collector; Sir Owen Morshead (1893-1977), librarian; A.N.L. Munby (1913–1974), writer; Denis F.E. Nash; Hugh Algernon Percy, Duke of Northumberland (1914-1988); Seumas O’Sullivan (1879-1958), pseudonym of James Sullivan Starkey, poet & editor; Kerrison Preston (1884-1974), solicitor; Charles Ryskamp (1928-2010), curator; Walford Graham Robertson (1866-1948), collector, to Frances White Emerson (1860-1957), collector, with 47pp typescript; Hamo Sassoon (1920-2004), archaeologist; Roland Short; Dennis R.W. Silk (1931-2019), cricketer & headmaster; Pradyumna Sinh; Robin Skelton (1925-1997), poet; John (1906-1992), collector; Brian Stock.
BOX 6:
Envelopes containing letters from
Douglas Cleverdon, bookseller, publisher, radio producer, with copies of his catalogues; Simon Rendall, printer, with copies of his publications; Rex Coleridge Taylor; John Thompson; John Leonard Thornton (1913-1992), librarian; Ruthven Todd (1914-1978), poet; M. Vaughan; Henry Rouse Viets (1890-1969), neurologist; Dame Cicely Veronica Wedgwood (1910-1997), historian; Lawrence Whistler (1912-2000), artist; Edwin Wolf II (1911-1991), librarian.
Box of letters, c. 1900-14, from Katherine Laird (“Ka”) Cox (1887–1938).
BOX 7:
Eric Gill (1882-1940), sculptor. Papers concerning Gill; box of unsorted letters, c. 1938-1940. (Keynes was a friend and early patron of Eric Gill.)
BOX 8:
Augustus Theodore Bartholomew (1882-1933), librarian. Bound volume of letters from Keynes to A.T. Bartholomew, 1906-1920, including many written from France and Flanders during World War I. There are letters to Keynes from Cosmo Gordon (1886-1965), collector & scholar, and from Bartholomew, and letters and postcards from Mansfield (“Manny”) Duval Forbes (1889-1936), historian.
BOX 9:
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886-1967), poet & author. Letters from Sassoon to Keynes; photos, etc.
BOX 10:
Unsorted general personal correspondence, c. 1970-1982. Includes, e.g., postcards from Randal Hume Keynes, grandson, et al.
BOX 11:
Unsorted general personal correspondence, 1970s, including several letters from Keynes’s family; plus Simon D. Keynes’s “works”, 1976.
BOX 12:
Stephen Frederick Gooden (1892-1955), artist, engraver & illustrator. Box of letters from Gooden to Keynes, with accounts, photographs and other material, mainly from the 1930s. (Keynes had a large collection of Gooden’s work.)
John Lawson (1932-2019), bookseller. A large number of Lawson’s catalogues, and letters to Keynes.
A.T. Bartholomew. Letters from Bartholomew to Keynes, 1908-1913.
BOX 13:
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), knight, physician & author. Files and notebooks relating to Browne; Keynes’s scrapbook of cuttings and other papers on Browne. (Keynes’s Bibliography appeared in 1924, with a 2nd edition in 1968, and his edition of Browne’s Works came out in 1928-31, new edition 1964. In 1975 he gave 250 books on Thomas Browne to the library of the Royal College of Physicians.)
BOX 14:
William Blake (1757-1827), poet, painter & engraver. A large quantity of files on various aspects of Keynes’s studies of Blake: folders, envelopes, and loose papers. Mostly accumulated correspondence. A file on nightingale poems. (Keynes, during a period of more than 60 years of scholarship, published some 40 books on Blake, and served as a bibliographer, editor, publisher, discoverer, and collector of Blake.)
Topics.
Blake text; Blake exhibitions; Blake Studies—correspondence relating to the Rupert Hart-Davis publication; Trianon Press, publisher of Blake facsimiles; Blake Letters, 1948; speeches etc. to July 1950; drawings from the collection of Matthew Pryor; Blake bibliography 1921; portraits of Blake; Blake Centenary 1927; “The Phoenix”—poem attributed to William Blake.
Letters from
G.E. Bentley, Jr. (1930-2017), scholar; David Bindman, art historian; Morchard Bishop; Anthony Blunt (1907-1983), art historian; Samuel Foster Damon (1893-1971), scholar; Frances W. Emerson; David V. Erdman (1911-2001), scholar; Robert Essick, scholar; Arnold Fawcus (1918-1979), publisher; Julie Fawcus, publisher; Darrell Figgis (1882-1925), writer; George Goyder; W.D. Lavender, family friend; T.O. Mabbutt, scholar; Sir Francis Meynell (1891-1975), printer & publisher; Paul Miner (died 2017), scholar; William Muir (1846-1938), facsimilist; Alfred Edward Newton (1864–1940), collector; Morton Paley, scholar; Simon Rendall; Archibald George Blomefield Russell (1879-1955), art historian; John Sampson (1862-1931), librarian; Duncan John Sloss (1881-1964), scholar; Ruthven Todd; Daniel Waley (1921-2017), manuscript specialist at the British Library; Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978), musicologist, novelist & poet; William A. White (1843-1927), collector; Joseph Hartley Wicksteed (1870-1959), scholar; Thomas James Wise (1859-1937), bibliographer & forger; Christopher Wright, art historian; and others.
Enclosures.
Photographs of paintings and drawings by or attributed to William Blake; photographs of paintings by Edward Calvert (1799-1883), artist; early draft of G.E. Bentley, Jr. and Martin K. Nurmi (1920-2008), Blake Bibliography; typescript notes of portraits of Blake; MS of introductory articles on Blake; engraving and watercolour by W.D. Lavender; photocopies of typescript article “William Blake as Mrs. Butts’s bird”; photocopy of Blake MS poem “The Phoenix”.
Three individual items caught my attention
(i) Letter from Alec Martin of Christie’s (18 April 1950)
(ii) Letter from Laura DeWitt James, 1008 Dobrusky Drive, Bakersfield, Calif. (9 March 1946) giving details of “The William Blake Society” founded in June 1945 (80 members)
(iii) Cuttings and correspondence relating to the Blake Centenary, e.g. letter from Keynes to his mother [1927]
BOX 15:
William Blake. Various files on the Blake Trust, separate plates, Blake letters (facsimiles and photographs), new Blake letters, Pilgrim’s Progress, the Trianon Press, Blake iconography.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830), essayist. MS of a paper on Hazlitt.
Bibliographical Society of London. File on the Bibliographical Society.
Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), artist. File on Palmer.
BOX 16:
William Blake. Box containing a large quantity of accumulated photographs and negatives, etc., of pictures by or related to Blake; file on Blake letters; material for illustrations to Blake letters.
BOX 17:
William Blake. Keynes’s MS notebooks and typescripts on Blake. MS of article on Blake for Collier’s Encyclopaedia; MS of lecture to Blake Society, 23 September 1919; notebook containing, amongst much else, Keynes’s draft commentary for Gates of Paradise facsimile; notebooks (list of books with library shelf marks); pages torn from notebooks—poem on larks; Daughters of Albion commentary—photocopy of typescript introduction and plate by plate commentary; proofs of introduction to Trianon Press facsimile of All Religions Are One; typescript of lecture on Blake; typescript of talk to Friends of the Bodleian, library support group.
William Harvey (1578-1657), physician. MS notebook on William Harvey, and Blake. (Keynes’s Life of Harvey gained him the James Tait Black memorial prize in 1966. He had already published a Bibliography of Harvey in 1928, revised 1953, and The Portraiture of William Harvey, 1949, revised 1985.)
Box of correspondence relating to Blake Bibliography and the Nonesuch Press Milton. (Keynes’s interest in Blake probably inspired his more general interest in book design, helping his friend Francis Meynell design at least 20 Nonesuch Press books; until the mid-thirties, Meynell seldom approved a binding without asking Keynes his opinion on it.)
File on “Job” illustrations. Carbons of Keynes’s letters to Philip Hofer (1898-1984), curator & art historian, and Pierpont Morgan Library; Graham Robertson; John Johnson (Oxford University Press); letters from Alice G. E. Carthew (1867-1940), collector; Oxford University Press (publisher); J.M. Dent & Son, publisher; Philip Hofer; Laurence Binyon; Wilfred Martin, of Emery Walker Ltd, specialist printers; Kunstanstalt Max Jaffé, collotype printers, Vienna; letter from Sarah Helen (“Ella”) Pease (1861-1937) to Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), poet.
Grolier Club, society for bibliophiles. File on the Grolier Club Blake (Census of Blake’s Illuminated Books)—correspondence with the Club, letter of acknowledgement and thanks for donated copies; correspondence with Cambridge University Press, publisher; correspondence with Edwin Wolf II (joint author); correspondence with owners and dealers regarding Blake’s illuminated books; Keynes’s contract and letter to Grolier Club proposing publication.
Letters (mostly letters of congratulation and acknowledgement) from. Henrietta Collins Bartlett (1873-1963), librarian; W. Bateson; Pierre Berger, scholar; Laurence Binyon; Arnold Clarke; Sydney Cockerell; S. Foster Damon; Campbell Dodgson (1867-1948), art historian; Laura Mary Forster (1839-1924); Sir Herbert John Clifford Grierson (1866-1960), scholar; Grolier Club; Hans Hecht, cardiologist; Austin H. Jackson; Charles Thomas Jacobi* (1853-1933), printer; Sir Eric Robert Dalrymple Maclagan (1879-1951), art historian; Elizabeth Malkin; William Edward Moss (1874-1953), collector; A.E. Newton; Alfred William Pollard (1859-1944), bibliographer; Mrs. T.H. Riches, collector; Frank Rinder (1863-1937), collector; John Sampson; Charles Edward Sayle (1864-1924), librarian; General Archibald Stirling (1867-1931), collector; Sir Emery Walker (1851-1933), engraver, photographer & printer; Charles Whittingham & Griggs, printers; J.H. Wicksteed.
David V. Erdman. Correspondence from Erdman.
Frederick Hollyer (1838-1933), photographer & facsimilist. “Some Reproductions from the works of William Blake by Fredk Hollyer”—press cutting. (Hollyer himself retired in 1916. His sons continued the production of photographs of works of art under their father’s name.)
Richard C. Jackson (1847-1923), collector. Correspondence with Jackson (re the William Blake Society of Arts and Letters)
Max Plowman’s letters on Blake text, 1920s—some published in Bridge into the Future edited by Dorothy Plowman.
Henry Young, book-dealer. Prospectus of Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Liverpool, 1923).
BOX 18:
Files on
Edward Collier (active 1662–1708), otherwise Edwaert Colyer, painter; Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), historian; Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680), writer; Robert Hooke (1635-1703), scientist; Martin Lister (1639-1712), naturalist; John Ray (1627-1705), naturalist. (Keynes published bibliographies of John Ray in 1951, revised 1956; of Robert Hooke in 1960; and of Martin Lister in 1980.)
BOX 19:
John Evelyn (1620-1706), diarist, traveller, numismatist, antiquary, & gardener. Papers concerning Evelyn: bound typescript of Keynes’s Sandars Lectures in 1933-1934; box of papers relating to Evelyn bibliography, etc.; other files on Evelyn. (In 1916 Keynes issued a preliminary handlist for John Evelyn, in which he was much helped by A.T. Bartholomew; he developed it into a full bio-bibliography only in 1937. A revised edition followed in 1968.)
BOX 20:
Jane Austen (1775-1817), novelist. Box of miscellaneous papers relating to Austen. (The Jane Austen Bibliography was published in 1929.)
He had married Margaret Elizabeth Darwin, the grand-daughter of Charles Darwin in 1917. They had four sons: Richard Darwin (1919-2010), Quentin George (1921-2003), William Milo (1924-2009); Stephen John (1927 2017). A daughter, Harriet Frances (born 1918), died in infancy.
On the outbreak of war in 1939, Keynes volunteered for the Royal Air Force Medical Service, serving with it until 1945. When demobilised he became full surgeon at Barts, although approaching NHS retiring age. Keynes, however, was given the title of emeritus surgeon, with 12 beds, and continued surgical practice. In this post, he was the first UK surgeon to undertake thymectomy for previously incurable myasthenia gravis.
Keynes was an outstanding surgeon. Seen as less austere and formally dressed than his colleagues, he was a handsome man of tireless energy, though intolerant of the second rate. He finally retired from Barts in 1952, and was made knight bachelor in 1955 in belated recognition of his work.
Keynes combined medical skill with a passion for literature and was an avid bibliophile who had started collecting books during his school days. The notes that follow will give some indication of his literary and bibliographic activities.
Geoffrey Keynes died suddenly on 5 July 1982. Most of his library passed by bequest and purchase to Cambridge University Library.
SCOPE. The majority of boxes, not apparently meeting my research needs at the time, were not examined.
CONTENT. The following list is based on that compiled by Simon D. Keynes, Trinity College (grandson): “Rough list of papers. March 1982”. I transcribed the list and added further notes when I consulted the file in 1992. It has been further tweaked for this blog presentation.
◆
BOX 1:
Typescripts of The Gates of Memory* (“No life is long enough”).
*Geoffrey Keynes.—The gates of memory.—Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
[not examined]
Typescript of The Gates of Memory; reviews of Gates; letters to Keynes prompted by its publication.
[not examined]
BOX 3:
Original copies of The Enthusiast (schoolboy magazine, see Gates, pp. 31-2), in box; letters from Keynes to his parents, written from Rugby; Rugby School handbooks.
[not examined]
BOXES 4-6:
Envelopes containing letters to Keynes.
BOX 4:
Envelopes containing letters from
Ernest Altounyan (1890-1962), physician; Michael Ayrton (1921-1975), artist; Michael A. Badoo, physician; J. Brian Bamford (1908-1979), physician/Denis F.E. Nash (1913-2000), surgeon; Nicolas Barker, printing historian; William Bateson (1861-1926), biologist; R. Bearman; Esmond de Beer (1895-1990), scholar; John Betjeman (1906-1984), poet; Morchard Bishop (1903-1987), pseudonym of Frederick Field Stoner, otherwise Oliver Stonor, writer; Edmund Blunden (1896-1974), poet, with envelope of pamphlets; Kenneth Brease, botanical painter; archbishop of Canterbury (otherwise unidentified); Sebastian Carter, printer; Louis Chauvois, scientific writer; Lady Sybil Cholmondeley (1894-1989); Sir Sydney Cockerell (1867-1962), museum director; David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford and Balcarres (1900-1975); Harvey Cushing (1869-1939), neurosurgeon; Hugh Dalton (1887-1962), Baron Dalton, politician; Gaius Davies, psychiatrist; Walter de la Mare (1873-1956), poet, letters re R. Brooke; John Dreyfus (1918-2002), book designer & historian of printing; William Sidney, Baron De L’Isle and Dudley (1859–1945); Gordon Evans, medical student; David Findlay; Geoffrey Flavell (1913-1994), surgeon; Capt. C. Ford; Ernest Arthur (“Serge”) Freeman (1900-1975), orthopaedic surgeon; John Farquhar Fulton* (1899-1960), neurophysiologist, and others; David Garnett (1892-1981), writer; Robert Gathorne-Hardy (1902-1973), bookseller & gardener; Denis Geoffroy-Dechaume (1922-2012), painter; Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962), poet/Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959), painter; Philip Gosse (1879–1959), physician; George Armin Goyder (1908-1997), collector; Brian Cecil Guinness (1903-1985); Peter Gurtner, physician.
*Keynes’s work on Robert Boyle (1627-1691), natural philosopher, of whom he had an outstanding collection, was taken up by John Fulton at Yale.
[not examined]
BOX 5:
Envelopes containing letters from
Sir Rupert Hart-Davis (1907-1999), publisher; Geoffrey Gordon Hartill, physician & surgeon; Christopher Hassall (1912-1963), actor, dramatist, librettist, lyricist, biographer & poet; John Hayward (1905-1965), editor, critic, anthologist & bibliophile; Haro Hodson, cartoonist; James Hubbell; Frank Livingstone Huntley, scholar; John Johnson (1882–1956), printer; Henry James (1843-1916), novelist, with clippings & pamphlets; Richard Jennings; Bent Einer Juel-Jensen (1922-2006), physician & book collector; Piloo Jungalwalla, scholar; Edwin (“Puff”) Kersley, dealer; Leo Kersley (1920-2012), dancer; Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer (1906-1969), biographer & historian; Peter King; Kenneth J. Kingsbury, surgeon; R. Le Page; Wilmarth Sheldon “Lefty” Lewis (1895–1979), collector; Sir Owen Morshead (1893-1977), librarian; A.N.L. Munby (1913–1974), writer; Denis F.E. Nash; Hugh Algernon Percy, Duke of Northumberland (1914-1988); Seumas O’Sullivan (1879-1958), pseudonym of James Sullivan Starkey, poet & editor; Kerrison Preston (1884-1974), solicitor; Charles Ryskamp (1928-2010), curator; Walford Graham Robertson (1866-1948), collector, to Frances White Emerson (1860-1957), collector, with 47pp typescript; Hamo Sassoon (1920-2004), archaeologist; Roland Short; Dennis R.W. Silk (1931-2019), cricketer & headmaster; Pradyumna Sinh; Robin Skelton (1925-1997), poet; John (1906-1992), collector; Brian Stock.
[not examined]
BOX 6:
Envelopes containing letters from
Douglas Cleverdon, bookseller, publisher, radio producer, with copies of his catalogues; Simon Rendall, printer, with copies of his publications; Rex Coleridge Taylor; John Thompson; John Leonard Thornton (1913-1992), librarian; Ruthven Todd (1914-1978), poet; M. Vaughan; Henry Rouse Viets (1890-1969), neurologist; Dame Cicely Veronica Wedgwood (1910-1997), historian; Lawrence Whistler (1912-2000), artist; Edwin Wolf II (1911-1991), librarian.
Box of letters, c. 1900-14, from Katherine Laird (“Ka”) Cox (1887–1938).
[not examined]
BOX 7:
Eric Gill (1882-1940), sculptor. Papers concerning Gill; box of unsorted letters, c. 1938-1940. (Keynes was a friend and early patron of Eric Gill.)
[not examined]
BOX 8:
Augustus Theodore Bartholomew (1882-1933), librarian. Bound volume of letters from Keynes to A.T. Bartholomew, 1906-1920, including many written from France and Flanders during World War I. There are letters to Keynes from Cosmo Gordon (1886-1965), collector & scholar, and from Bartholomew, and letters and postcards from Mansfield (“Manny”) Duval Forbes (1889-1936), historian.
[not examined]
BOX 9:
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886-1967), poet & author. Letters from Sassoon to Keynes; photos, etc.
[not examined]
BOX 10:
Unsorted general personal correspondence, c. 1970-1982. Includes, e.g., postcards from Randal Hume Keynes, grandson, et al.
[not examined]
BOX 11:
Unsorted general personal correspondence, 1970s, including several letters from Keynes’s family; plus Simon D. Keynes’s “works”, 1976.
[not examined]
BOX 12:
Stephen Frederick Gooden (1892-1955), artist, engraver & illustrator. Box of letters from Gooden to Keynes, with accounts, photographs and other material, mainly from the 1930s. (Keynes had a large collection of Gooden’s work.)
John Lawson (1932-2019), bookseller. A large number of Lawson’s catalogues, and letters to Keynes.
A.T. Bartholomew. Letters from Bartholomew to Keynes, 1908-1913.
[not examined]
BOX 13:
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), knight, physician & author. Files and notebooks relating to Browne; Keynes’s scrapbook of cuttings and other papers on Browne. (Keynes’s Bibliography appeared in 1924, with a 2nd edition in 1968, and his edition of Browne’s Works came out in 1928-31, new edition 1964. In 1975 he gave 250 books on Thomas Browne to the library of the Royal College of Physicians.)
[not examined]
William Blake (1757-1827), poet, painter & engraver. A large quantity of files on various aspects of Keynes’s studies of Blake: folders, envelopes, and loose papers. Mostly accumulated correspondence. A file on nightingale poems. (Keynes, during a period of more than 60 years of scholarship, published some 40 books on Blake, and served as a bibliographer, editor, publisher, discoverer, and collector of Blake.)
Topics.
Blake text; Blake exhibitions; Blake Studies—correspondence relating to the Rupert Hart-Davis publication; Trianon Press, publisher of Blake facsimiles; Blake Letters, 1948; speeches etc. to July 1950; drawings from the collection of Matthew Pryor; Blake bibliography 1921; portraits of Blake; Blake Centenary 1927; “The Phoenix”—poem attributed to William Blake.
Letters from
G.E. Bentley, Jr. (1930-2017), scholar; David Bindman, art historian; Morchard Bishop; Anthony Blunt (1907-1983), art historian; Samuel Foster Damon (1893-1971), scholar; Frances W. Emerson; David V. Erdman (1911-2001), scholar; Robert Essick, scholar; Arnold Fawcus (1918-1979), publisher; Julie Fawcus, publisher; Darrell Figgis (1882-1925), writer; George Goyder; W.D. Lavender, family friend; T.O. Mabbutt, scholar; Sir Francis Meynell (1891-1975), printer & publisher; Paul Miner (died 2017), scholar; William Muir (1846-1938), facsimilist; Alfred Edward Newton (1864–1940), collector; Morton Paley, scholar; Simon Rendall; Archibald George Blomefield Russell (1879-1955), art historian; John Sampson (1862-1931), librarian; Duncan John Sloss (1881-1964), scholar; Ruthven Todd; Daniel Waley (1921-2017), manuscript specialist at the British Library; Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978), musicologist, novelist & poet; William A. White (1843-1927), collector; Joseph Hartley Wicksteed (1870-1959), scholar; Thomas James Wise (1859-1937), bibliographer & forger; Christopher Wright, art historian; and others.
Enclosures.
Photographs of paintings and drawings by or attributed to William Blake; photographs of paintings by Edward Calvert (1799-1883), artist; early draft of G.E. Bentley, Jr. and Martin K. Nurmi (1920-2008), Blake Bibliography; typescript notes of portraits of Blake; MS of introductory articles on Blake; engraving and watercolour by W.D. Lavender; photocopies of typescript article “William Blake as Mrs. Butts’s bird”; photocopy of Blake MS poem “The Phoenix”.
Three individual items caught my attention
(i) Letter from Alec Martin of Christie’s (18 April 1950)
“I have received three Blake Books:
No Natural ReligionMarriage of Heaven and HellSongs of Innocence and Experience
From Mrs. Drysdale of Radley, Abingdon, Berks.* Are you likely to be coming this way or may I send them you to look at and give me a brief description for the catalogue with a rough note of what they are worth?”
With Keynes’s reply drafted on back of same letter
“This is most interesting. Wd you please send the books here, where I can deal with them more easily? I shall be away until Monday 24th April.”
And Keynes’s typed note
“W. BLAKESongs of Innocence and of Experience54 plates printed posthumously from the original etched copper-plates on Whatman paper with watermark dated 1831.Bound in red mor. gt., g.e, of about the same date.Carries the book plate of Samuel Boddington**.The Marriage of Heaven and Hell27 plates in facsimile coloured by hand, issued by Camden Hotten*** in 1868.¼ vellum and blue boards.There is No Natural Religion12 Plates in facsimile, some coloured by hand, issued by Pickering & Co., 1886.Cf., with original printed wrappers bound in.”
*Winifred Drysdale (1904-1996), Bromsgrove House, Radley, Abingdon, Berks.**Samuel Boddington (1766-1843), collector***John Camden Hotten (1832-1873), publisher
(ii) Letter from Laura DeWitt James, 1008 Dobrusky Drive, Bakersfield, Calif. (9 March 1946) giving details of “The William Blake Society” founded in June 1945 (80 members)
Recently I have sent out a study course for the members to follow, that will advance them through the three degrees, although that is as far as we go in any lodge procedure.Prospectus of the Society attached.
(iii) Cuttings and correspondence relating to the Blake Centenary, e.g. letter from Keynes to his mother [1927]
You see that you will be addressed by Lewis Hind* and Thomas Wright**, both bores of the first water. But I should very much like to have an account of it from you. Meetings of the Blake Soc. are sometimes so futile as to be funny. Introduce yourself to T. Wright. He will blink at you kindly through his spectacles.
And Florence Keynes’s*** notes of the speeches in Wesley’s Chapel and in Bunhill Fields.
*Charles Lewis Hind (1862–1927), journalist, writer, editor, art critic, & art historian**Thomas Wright (1859-1936), of Olney, founder/secretary of Blake Society, author***Florence Ada (Brown) Keynes (1861–1958), mother
BOX 15:
William Blake. Various files on the Blake Trust, separate plates, Blake letters (facsimiles and photographs), new Blake letters, Pilgrim’s Progress, the Trianon Press, Blake iconography.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830), essayist. MS of a paper on Hazlitt.
Bibliographical Society of London. File on the Bibliographical Society.
Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), artist. File on Palmer.
[not examined]
BOX 16:
William Blake. Box containing a large quantity of accumulated photographs and negatives, etc., of pictures by or related to Blake; file on Blake letters; material for illustrations to Blake letters.
[not examined]
BOX 17:
William Blake. Keynes’s MS notebooks and typescripts on Blake. MS of article on Blake for Collier’s Encyclopaedia; MS of lecture to Blake Society, 23 September 1919; notebook containing, amongst much else, Keynes’s draft commentary for Gates of Paradise facsimile; notebooks (list of books with library shelf marks); pages torn from notebooks—poem on larks; Daughters of Albion commentary—photocopy of typescript introduction and plate by plate commentary; proofs of introduction to Trianon Press facsimile of All Religions Are One; typescript of lecture on Blake; typescript of talk to Friends of the Bodleian, library support group.
William Harvey (1578-1657), physician. MS notebook on William Harvey, and Blake. (Keynes’s Life of Harvey gained him the James Tait Black memorial prize in 1966. He had already published a Bibliography of Harvey in 1928, revised 1953, and The Portraiture of William Harvey, 1949, revised 1985.)
Box of correspondence relating to Blake Bibliography and the Nonesuch Press Milton. (Keynes’s interest in Blake probably inspired his more general interest in book design, helping his friend Francis Meynell design at least 20 Nonesuch Press books; until the mid-thirties, Meynell seldom approved a binding without asking Keynes his opinion on it.)
File on “Job” illustrations. Carbons of Keynes’s letters to Philip Hofer (1898-1984), curator & art historian, and Pierpont Morgan Library; Graham Robertson; John Johnson (Oxford University Press); letters from Alice G. E. Carthew (1867-1940), collector; Oxford University Press (publisher); J.M. Dent & Son, publisher; Philip Hofer; Laurence Binyon; Wilfred Martin, of Emery Walker Ltd, specialist printers; Kunstanstalt Max Jaffé, collotype printers, Vienna; letter from Sarah Helen (“Ella”) Pease (1861-1937) to Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), poet.
Grolier Club, society for bibliophiles. File on the Grolier Club Blake (Census of Blake’s Illuminated Books)—correspondence with the Club, letter of acknowledgement and thanks for donated copies; correspondence with Cambridge University Press, publisher; correspondence with Edwin Wolf II (joint author); correspondence with owners and dealers regarding Blake’s illuminated books; Keynes’s contract and letter to Grolier Club proposing publication.
Letters (mostly letters of congratulation and acknowledgement) from. Henrietta Collins Bartlett (1873-1963), librarian; W. Bateson; Pierre Berger, scholar; Laurence Binyon; Arnold Clarke; Sydney Cockerell; S. Foster Damon; Campbell Dodgson (1867-1948), art historian; Laura Mary Forster (1839-1924); Sir Herbert John Clifford Grierson (1866-1960), scholar; Grolier Club; Hans Hecht, cardiologist; Austin H. Jackson; Charles Thomas Jacobi* (1853-1933), printer; Sir Eric Robert Dalrymple Maclagan (1879-1951), art historian; Elizabeth Malkin; William Edward Moss (1874-1953), collector; A.E. Newton; Alfred William Pollard (1859-1944), bibliographer; Mrs. T.H. Riches, collector; Frank Rinder (1863-1937), collector; John Sampson; Charles Edward Sayle (1864-1924), librarian; General Archibald Stirling (1867-1931), collector; Sir Emery Walker (1851-1933), engraver, photographer & printer; Charles Whittingham & Griggs, printers; J.H. Wicksteed.
*See obituary [by Keynes?] in The Times, 6 April 1933.Thanks from assorted libraries and institutions for gift of bibliography—majority of letters are thanks for gift.
David V. Erdman. Correspondence from Erdman.
Frederick Hollyer (1838-1933), photographer & facsimilist. “Some Reproductions from the works of William Blake by Fredk Hollyer”—press cutting. (Hollyer himself retired in 1916. His sons continued the production of photographs of works of art under their father’s name.)
Richard C. Jackson (1847-1923), collector. Correspondence with Jackson (re the William Blake Society of Arts and Letters)
Max Plowman’s letters on Blake text, 1920s—some published in Bridge into the Future edited by Dorothy Plowman.
Henry Young, book-dealer. Prospectus of Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Liverpool, 1923).
BOX 18:
Files on
Edward Collier (active 1662–1708), otherwise Edwaert Colyer, painter; Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), historian; Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680), writer; Robert Hooke (1635-1703), scientist; Martin Lister (1639-1712), naturalist; John Ray (1627-1705), naturalist. (Keynes published bibliographies of John Ray in 1951, revised 1956; of Robert Hooke in 1960; and of Martin Lister in 1980.)
[not examined]
BOX 19:
John Evelyn (1620-1706), diarist, traveller, numismatist, antiquary, & gardener. Papers concerning Evelyn: bound typescript of Keynes’s Sandars Lectures in 1933-1934; box of papers relating to Evelyn bibliography, etc.; other files on Evelyn. (In 1916 Keynes issued a preliminary handlist for John Evelyn, in which he was much helped by A.T. Bartholomew; he developed it into a full bio-bibliography only in 1937. A revised edition followed in 1968.)
[not examined]
BOX 20:
Jane Austen (1775-1817), novelist. Box of miscellaneous papers relating to Austen. (The Jane Austen Bibliography was published in 1929.)
Izaak Walton (1593-1683), author of The Compleat Angler. File of papers relating to Walton.
Thomas Willis (1621-1675), doctor & scientist. File of papers relating to Willis. (Keynes’s work on Thomas Willis remained uncompleted at his death.)
Timothie Bright (1550-1615), physician & author. Typescript of lectures (1961) by Keynes on Bright; MS in notebook in Box 13.
[not examined]
BOX 21:
George Berkeley (1685-1753), bishop of Cloyne. Correspondence, papers, notebooks, and other material, relating to a Bibliography of Berkeley which appeared in 1976.
[not examined]
BOX 22:
John Donne (1572-1631), poet. Book of cuttings from booksellers’ catalogues on Donne; Keynes’s scrapbooks of cuttings and other papers on Donne; various other papers relating to Donne and his library. (Keynes’s first author bibliography, of John Donne, was published by the Baskerville Club, a group of Cambridge bibliophiles, in 1914. Revised editions appeared in 1932, 1958, and 1972. Like his subsequent author bibliographies, it was seen as readable and elegant, combining physical description of volumes with biographical material.)
[not examined]
BOX 23:
John Donne. Two of Keynes’s scrapbooks on Donne, c. 1913-1944 and c. 1950-1982.
[not examined]
BOX 24:
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), poet. Papers connected with the edition of Brooke’s letters, royalties, etc.; typescript of a lecture by Keynes on Brooke; Keynes’s two volumes of press cuttings, reviews and other material about Brooke, 1907-1982. (At Rugby, Keynes had been a contemporary and close friend of Rupert Brooke, whose Letters he edited in 1968.)
[not examined]
BOX 25:
William Blake. Ruthven Todd’s typescript on William Blake, dated 28 April 1942, with extensive MS annotations by Keynes and others, in a large bound volume: “William Blake Drawings and Paintings, Draft V”; early scrapbook of cuttings on Blake (not compiled by Keynes); Keynes scrapbook containing reviews and other papers concerning Keynes’s Nonesuch Blake (1925) and the Nonesuch Milton.
(i) Typescript.
Signed on front free endpaper “Geoffrey Keynes 28 April 1942”. Pasted to front free endpaper: letter from Ruthven Todd (4 April 1942):
As you will see, here at last is your lesser M’hill, complete with spare pages after the index …
Letter subsequently annotated
Revised in orange ink, November 1943. Ruthven Todd.
Enclosures
Letters from Martin Butlin*, Ruthven Todd, etc.
Sale catalogue of William Bell Scott** with letter from H. Buxton Forman***.
*Martin Butlin, art historian**William Bell Scott (1811-1890), artist***Henry Buxton Forman (1842-1917), bibliographer & bookseller
(ii) Scrap book (not compiled by Keynes)
Contents press-cuttings mostly 1880s-1920s. But includes “William Blake: the illustrator of the Grave, &c.” Literary Gazette (11 August 1827). Some publishers’ announcements and cuttings from sale catalogues.
(iii) In the Keynes scrapbook
The new Blake/The Writings of William Bake. Edited in three volumes by Geoffrey Keynes (Nonesuch Press £5 17s 6d)
Review signed Thomas Wright
Weekly Westminster (12 September 1925)
BOX 26:
Thomas Browne. Material relating to Keynes’s work on Browne including MS of edition of letters, etc.
[not examined].
BOX 27:
William Harvey. Keynes’s MS notebook on Harvey; Keynes’s volumes of cuttings, containing reviews, catalogue entries, newspaper articles, and other material, on John Evelyn (3 vols.), Harvey, Thomas Browne (3 vols.), William Hazlitt, and Jane Austen (2 vols.).
[not examined]
BOX 28:
Medical papers. World War II notes on wounded air-crew, in notebooks; MSS of lectures and papers on medical subjects.
[not examined]
BOX 29:
Medical papers. Case histories, c. 1930-1950. Notes on thyroid cases and notes of individual cases of breast cancer, etc.
[contents closed to readers until 2025]
BOX 30:
Ballet papers. File on Camargo Society, ballet company; envelopes containing accumulated ballet programmes, and Marlowe Society drama club programmes. File on the “Job” ballet; volume of cuttings on the “Job” ballet, 1948 revival, etc.
(Keynes, who was a great admirer of ballet, wrote the scenario of “Job: a Masque for Dancing”, based on William Blake’s “Illustrations of the Book of Job”, for which his sister-in-law Gwen Raverat* prepared the designs, and Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) the music. The ballet was first performed by the Camargo Society in 1931. The John Rylands Library, Manchester, contains the Michael Kennedy* papers including [KEN/3/1/63] his correspondence, 22 Apr 1963-19 Feb 1964, with Keynes relating to the first performance of “Job” on 5 Jul 1931, and the film, “The Vision of William Blake” (1958), initiated by the Blake Bi-Centenary Committee in which he was actively involved.)
*Gwen Raverat (1885-1957), wood-engraver
** George Michael Sinclair Kennedy (1926-2014), music critic
[not examined]
BOX 31:
Miscellaneous papers. Photographs of Keynes, including one at Weston, 1917; envelope of photographs of picnics on Granta, pre-World War I, labelled C.A. Gordon; miscellaneous early family photographs, including the Raverats*, Margaret N. Keynes**, John Maynard Keynes***, et al.; photographs of a holiday in Cornwall, July 1914; other photographs.
*Gwen Raverat and her husband Jacques Raverat (1885-1925), painterKeynes’s honorary degrees—speeches, certificates and other papers.
**Margaret Neville Keynes (1885-1970), married name Hill, sister
***John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), Baron Keynes, economist, brother
File of papers relating to the trustees of A.T. Bartholomew.
File of papers relating to the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery.
File of papers relating to bibliographies (contracts, etc.)
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), physician, natural philosopher & poet. File on Erasmus Darwin letters.
“Puff Kersley by Leo.”
David Godine, printer & publisher. Godine catalogues.
John Maynard Keynes. Files of papers relating to the Keynes [J.M. Keynes] Trustees in the 1950s; the official valuation for probate of J.M. Keynes’s stocks and shares in the U.K. and U.S.; several pages (foolscap) of J.M. Keynes’s MS of a book on Indian Currency, used for drawings by Duncan Grant (1885-1978), painter; booklet, “The Doom according to Keynes”‘, by D.W. Walsh, 1920—a sermon on “The Economic Consequences of the Peace”; file of press cuttings on the death of J.M. Keynes; photocopy of J.M. Keynes’s will as annotated by J.M. Keynes; letters from Sir Roy Harrod (1900-1978), economist & biographer, and others, on the Keynes Estate; numerous letters to G.L. Keynes prompted by the death of J.M. Keynes; carbon copies of letters from J.M. Keynes to T.E. Jessop (1896-1980), scholar, on David Hume (1711-1776), philosopher.
Giles Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), writer; John Maynard Keynes; Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), philosopher. Photographs, etc.
Addition, 1993. G.L. Keynes and others: correspondence between J.M. Keynes’s executors and publishers about the republication and reprinting of his books, 1946-1952.
[not examined]
BOX 32:
Samuel Butler (1835-1902), novelist. Papers on Butler, Edward Johnston (1872-1944), calligrapher, and A.E. Housman (1859-1936), poet; bound volume of Keynes’s cuttings up to 1982 (his own miscellaneous short publications, letters to newspapers, etc.).
Box labelled Gwen Raverat, including several woodcuts.
[not examined]
BOX 33:
Keynes’s typescript catalogues of his own books at Boundary Road, Arkwright Road, in the 1930s.
[not examined]
BOX 34:
Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935), soldier, author & archaeologist. Bound folder on The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, including cuttings; bound volume of (a few) letters from Lawrence to Keynes; press cuttings on Lawrence’s death.
Official documents relating to Keynes’s commission in the R.A.M.C., August 1914.
Keynes MS, “A Very Modern Utopian”, on H.G. Wells (1866-1946), writer—speech or lecture in booklet.
Keynes MS, “Minutes of Climbs in Wales”, with G.H.L.M.* and H.S.W.**, September 1907.
*George Herbert Leigh Mallory (1886-1924), mountaineerMargaret Elizabeth (Darwin) Keynes (1890-1974), wife. Margaret Keynes MS “My Canadian Diary”, 1956-1957, 401 pages, bound volume.
*Hugh S. Wilson (1885-1915)
Keynes, book plates (both types), and “Ex Dono Geoffrey Keynes” labels.
Simon Nowell-Smith (1909-1996), book collector. Packet of letters from Keynes to Nowell-Smith, 1929-1982.
[not examined]
◆
Online Resources
Use “Archives Hub” to locate Keynes papers elsewhere. For example, Liverpool University Library holds Keynes’s letters to John Sampson.
Material, manuscript, printed, and photographic, relating to Keynes's career at St Bartholomew's Hospital. My thanks to Ted Ryan and Tim Lockwood for directing me to this important resource.
Janus provides access to more than 1800 catalogues of archives held throughout Cambridge.
Royal College of Surgeons: Plarr's Lives of the Fellows online. Lives of Keynes and many of his medical colleagues.
Museum collection including the Keynes blood transfusion apparatus.
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