Literary and social papers of James Strachey, comprising:

(i) General Correspondence, including letters to James and his wife and fellow-worker, Alix (some to her alone on the death of James) by Geoffrey Keynes (twenty, on Rupert Brooke and Lytton Strachey: 'With regard to Lytton's letters, I have them all safely, but Maynard has arranged them in series with his own – that is, mostly mounted in volumes. I think it is very important that Roy Harrod, who is writing Maynard's life, should see these all together, so I hope you will let me keep them for the present. There can be no question of the publication of many of them – in fact, I think the bulk will have to be destroyed...'), Dudley Ward (observing that his friend Rupert Brooke "used letters in general rather to disguise than to bring out his real self"), Leonard Woolf (ten), Henry Lamb, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, Quentin Bell ("...I have been asked by Leonard to write a biography of Virginia..."), David ʻBunny' Garnett (five, on his wife and daughters, the death of James, and how to deal with Holroyd and his book), Frances Partridge (thirteen letters from Ham Spray and elsewhere, about her husband Ralph's death, Lytton's books, the sale of Ham Spray, visiting Gerald Brenan and Gerald selling his letters from Carrington to America), Roger Senhouse (on pictures, Lytton's books and Lew Feldman), Julian Vinogradoff (about Lytton's letters to Lady Ottoline Morrell), Duncan Grant (seven), John Sparrow (a tentative project to publish Rupert Brooke's letters), Herbert Agar, Valerie Eliot, Laurence Gowing, Jane Harrison, Christopher Hassall (on Rupert Brooke), Michael Holroyd (on the death of James Strachey), Ernest Jones, Gabriel Merle, John Middleton Murry, J. T. Sheppard, Barbara Strachey, John Strachey, Julia Strachey, Richard Strachey, Simonette Strachey, and others

(ii) Letters to James Strachey by Harry Norton: a series of thirty-five letters and three cards, written between 1905 and 1914, containing vivid, sometimes startling, vignettes of their friends and their doings, including George Mallory, who was besotted with James ("...How scholastic even your copulations are! I'm not surprised that one was enough for George; and as for your 'even an erection' – Foh!...") and Rupert Brooke [aka the ʻRajah' or ʻSarawak'], with whom James was besotted ("...Rupert I found in bed, with the window wide open; on the whole, I felt inclined to bugger him, but it hardly seemed probably I should succeed, so I made no attempt. He was very much annoyed with you... ...I wish I knew what [Rupert's] letters to you were like; for I feel I ought to be able to see his state of mind, that this is an opportunity of settling all the old questions... ...It's astonishing, isn't it, how fond the Rajah is of being buggered... Still, isn't [Edward] Dent a little – a little high for his palate?..."); as well as Mallory's relations with Brooke ("...Mallory? I fear but a vague figure appears... He was dressed as an out-door coquette in dull rough horse-dung bieze & dull green wool socks... His hair was not greasy, but faintly greased. His manners were good but second hand; it was impossible to forget that he was behaving. He will probably take a low second class in the History Tripos... I can't believe that he would fall in love with Rupert, but I think that Rupert (whoever precisely he is) might with him..."); Brooke's girlfriends ("...The Rajah a Heteropath? Well, what did we know about him?... [He] displayed the kind of passion for Rugby which implies a love affair; he talked to me of sodomy... you must remember that his connexion with Newnham is peculiar; for the first time in his life he has met a large number of women; they're all young, they're all in love with him... they act, intrigue, argue and chatter with him..."); and other goings-on within their circle ("...Maynard I found had not spent the night in his bed; on the whole I concluded he must have spent it in Duncan's..."); by 1914, Norton was travelling in Europe "and the winds seem to be blowing us apart", over 80 pages, pasted onto transparent paper guards, with wear at the edges of two letters, 8vo, Trinity College, Cambridge, and elsewhere, 1905-1914

(iii) Other effects, including seven printed invitations to Cambridge Conversazione Society dinners, 1906-1915; six appointment diaries, 1957-1969 (noting visits from Frances Partridge, Michael Holroyd and Paul Levy); the Letter and Memorandum of Agreement from Chatto & Windus about for publication of a volume of Lytton's Essays; correspondence with publishers and agents about new editions, royalties, stage and film rights, translations; notes on publications and reprints; offprints and cuttings of articles by Lytton Strachey