Scope and Content Note
The collection of Grant Richards (1872-1948) relating to A. E. Housman spans the years 1898-1947, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1910-1942. Included are memorials to Housman written shortly after his death and several pieces of Richards’s personal and family correspondence. The focus of the collection is on the preparation of Richards’s biographical work, Housman, 1897-1936 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1942). During the years 1897-1936, Richards was both friend and publisher of A. E. Housman.
The collection contains general and personal correspondence, material preparatory to Housman, manuscripts, typescripts, galley and page proofs of Housman, newspaper clippings, printed matter, and music scores.
Correspondents in addition to A. E. Housman include his brother and sister, Laurence Housman and Katherine E. Symons, and Oxford University Press. Newspaper clippings and magazine articles contain reviews of Richards’s biography and critiques of Housman’s works.
Other correspondents include Witter Bynner, John Carter, John Drinkwater, Ronald Firbank, B.W. Huebsch, Harold Nicolson, Maxwell E. Perkins, William Rothenstein, George Macaulay Trevelyan, Edmund Wilson, and Oxford University Press.