This collection is very heterogeneous in nature, and the bulk of it consists of material chiefly valuable for autograph purposes.
Biographical sketches of prominent Americans, with some routine correspondence, gathered by Guy C. Bixler for a volume of a proposed encyclopedia to be published by the Knickerbocker Publishing Company, New York City, comprise three boxes.
Two boxes of letters, cards, pictures, and legal and business papers contain autographs of British men and women in all fields of human endeavor, including playwrights, actors, actresses, suffragists, statesmen, peers, physicians, scientists, barristers, musicians, sculptors, painters, and clergymen, chiefly for the period of the nineteenth century but extending also as far back as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An eleven-page letter, 1854, of Robert Lee, the Scott clergyman, to Lord Munay on the subject of the attitude of the clergy toward public questions and the appointment of a different type of man to the theological departments of the universities is among these autographs.
There are three volumes of British autographs. A volume of letters, 1821-1878, to Arthur Fitzgerald-Kinnaird, 10th Baron Kinnaird, M.P., contains mainly autographs of men in British public life, but also includes a few continental items, among them an undated letter of Count Cavour, the father of Italian unity. A second volume comprises an autograph collection [of the Rev. Jerom Murch, Mayor of Bath], including autographs of British peers, government officials, bishops, literary men, jurists, and others of the nineteenth century. A third volume contains autographs of British peers, government officials, and others of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The volume of letters, 1868-1925, to Sir Sidney and Lady Colvin are chiefly personal. About fifteen of the letters are from George James Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle and sometimes contain comments on literary and artistic matters. Occasional letters from this volume have been printed in E. V. Lucas, The Colvins and Their Friends (New York, 1928). Sir Colvin was director of Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, 1876-1884, and keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum for nearly thirty years after 1884.
A folder of letters from Georgiana, Countess of Guilford, 1900-1916, written from various points in Great Britain to Ann Stephens, New York City, are personal, but sometimes in 1914-1916 contain comments on World War I from the British viewpoint. A folder of letters, 1887-1898, to Arthur Weld, drama and music editor of the Milwaukee Journal in the nineties, are chiefly from American actors, actresses, and musicians, and are mostly short personal notes. There is also a box of autographs of American artists, actors, actresses, authors, capitalists, and suffragists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and autographs of French men of letters, painters, statesmen, soldiers, and scholars of the nineteenth century.
Photostatic and typewritten copies of letters, 1834-1841, 1861, 1863, relate to Texas history. Included are several letters relating to the nomination of Peter W. Grayson for president of the Republic of Texas to succeed Samuel Houston in 1838 and Grayson's suicide, a letter of Houston, 1841, and a letter dated Galveston, January, 1863, describing military action about that city.
