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The archive contains little scientific material as by far the greater part of Thomson's scientific papers are deposited in Cambridge University Library. Material is arranged as follows:
Section A - Personal material and correspondence;
Section B - Notes and drafts for publication;
Section C - Scientific correspondence;
Section D - Accounts and biographies of Thomson;
Section E - Published works.

The material in this collection covers the period 1836-1958. It is presented in eight sections.

Section A, Biographical, covers the period 1874-1958. The material includes biographical profiles, certificates, press cuttings, photographs and invitations. Correspondence and papers used by Lord Rayleigh in the preparation of his biography of Thomson The Life of Sir J. J. Thomson O.M. sometime master of Trinity College, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1942) can be found at A/23-A31. A/110-A/143 include press cuttings on Thomson's lectures and reviews of his publications. Certificates are at A/72-A/103

Section B, Family and personal, is the largest in the collection and spans the period 1836-1952. The bulk of the material consists of family and personal correspondence sent to members of the Thomson and Paget families between 1872 and 1952. This correspondence has been arranged by recipient, thus for example, letters from Thomson to his wife are to be found in Lady Thomson's correspondence at B/45-B/53 rather than in that of Thomson himself (B/1-B/6). There is significant correspondence sent to Thomson, 1873-1940, but the largest component of the section, at B/45-B/639, is correspondence and papers of Lady Thomson covering the period 1872-1950. This includes family and personal correspondence received by Lady Thomson, notebooks and diaries, and correspondence from societies and organisations. At B/640-B/679 is correspondence received by other family members including G.P. Thomson, J.P. Thomson, F.V. Thomson and G.E. Paget. The section also includes photographs, household accounts and a little miscellaneous material.

Section C, Trinity College, Cambridge, consists chiefly of incoming correspondence sent to Thomson as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and covers the period 1918-1944. The bulk relates to College matters including students, Fellows, meetings etc., but there is also business and personal correspondence including letters of congratulations on Thomson's installation as Master in 1918. The correspondence includes letters from Cambridge colleagues such as E. Rutherford, R.T. Glazebrook, J.G. Frazer and A. Schuster. The section also includes invitations to social occasions received by the Thomsons and replies to invitations to social events hosted by the Thomsons between 1918 and 1938. There are also a small number of Trinity College entrance examination papers and scripts.

Section D, Research, is very slight. It consists of a few research notes and photographs for the period 1893 to 1934.

Section E, Societies and organisations, is also slight. It has been arranged in alphabetical order and covers the period 1886-1930. The most significant material is that at E/10-E/28: reports and minutes of the Committee on Science in the Educational System of Great Britain, which Thomson chaired between 1902 and 1920. There is also a small amount of Royal Society material.

Section F, Lectures, speeches and publications, covers the period 1876-1938. There is material on a number of Thomson's public lectures and speeches including lectures given at the British Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Winnipeg, Canada, 1909. A notebook at F/27 has typescript notes on lectures delivered at Cambridge by Thomson. Publications material includes manuscript drafts of the first edition of Conduction of Electricity through Gases (Cambridge 1903) and Rays of Positive Electricity (London 1913). Press cuttings on Thomson's lectures and publications can be found at A/110-A/143.

Section G, Visits and conferences, is not extensive. The material has been arranged in chronological order 1896-1938. It includes brief correspondence on the British Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, 1909.

Section H, Correspondence, is presented in two sequences, scientific and general. The scientific sequence includes letters from G. G. Stokes, Lord Rayleigh (4th Baron) and Lord Kelvin. The general sequence is arranged in chronological order covering the period 1888-1938. A file of 'Letters to JJ from distinguished people and others' is at H/32-H/35, which includes correspondence from Arthur Balfour, Stanley Baldwin and Austen Chamberlain.

Section A, Biographical, includes letters from the King George VI’s Private Secretary informing Thomson of the King’s wish to award him the Order of Merit. There are also press cuttings relating to Thomson and material concerning dinners and functions at Cambridge University.

Section B, Family and personal, chiefly consists of correspondence sent to Thomson’s wife, Rose, and to his brother Frederick. The former group of correspondence dates from 1882 to 1949 and comprises letters to Lady Thomson from various members of her family, including her twin sister, Violet, and letters of thanks for hospitality at Trinity College from visiting academics, scientists, politicians and others. The letters to Frederick Thomson are from Lady Thomson and date from 1906 to 1914. There are a few letters, 1903, from Thomson to his wife.

Section C, Correspondence, is presented in two sequences: general correspondence to Thomson dating from 1886 to 1939 and correspondence in French with foreign scientists 1898-1926. The general correspondence is from various scientists, politicians and academics, a large part of it being letters of thanks for hospitality at Trinity College. The correspondence in French, of both Thomson and his wife, is with a number of distinguished scientists, or their spouses, including Marie Curie, A.H. Becquerel and Paul Langevin.

Section D, Non-text material, has one item only: a film of Thomson delivering a lecture in 1934. There is also an index of correspondents.

This collection contains correspondence, a journal of a tour in Greece in 1856, notebooks on classical subjects and other writings, and printed material primarily relating to his classical studies and lectures as Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge.

This material forms a series within the additional manuscripts series b, c, and d and are catalogued as Add.MS.b.115-119, Add.MS.c.72-73, Add.MS.c.158-160

The archive contains papers of both Robert Calverley Trevelyan and his wife Elizabeth (née des Amorie van der Hoeven, known as Bessie), though the majority relate to R. C. Trevelyan and comprise personal items 1872-1951, publications 1898-1950, publications 1989-1950, reviews of publications 1898-1953, photographs 1876-1949, family material.

This archive is in the process of being catalogued: the majority of the correspondence has been catalogued at item level, while around fifteen boxes predominantly containing working notebooks and photographs remain; work on these and revisions will follow.

The collection comprises letters, mainly to Dawson Turner from members of his family (A1–MM1), an engraving (NN1), a poem (OO1), three albums of ‘Etchings and Autographs’ (PP1–3), and notes and illustrative material made or collected by A. N. L. Munby (QQ1–4).

The correspondence in files A1–OO1 consists mainly of personal letters to Dawson Turner from his family and a few friends. Besides a wealth of domestic detail, the letters from Mary Turner and her children contain vivid accounts of their travels in Britain and abroad, including a stay in Rouen shortly after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Harriet Gunn’s impressions of Belgium (including the site of the Battle of Waterloo) in the 1840s, and a trouble-ridden tour in Germany and Switzerland by Dawson W. Turner. A letter from F. T. Palgrave from Paris in the spring of 1848 gives a fascinating picture of life there during the early days of the Second Republic.

Dawson Turner’s family lived variously in Yarmouth and rural Norfolk, Glasgow, London, and Oxford. Their letters describe personalities and events as well as the localities themselves, and contain observations on such disparate subjects as Queen Victoria’s coronation procession and Charles Macintosh’s newly-invented rubberised raincoats. Art and architecture are carefully documented. There are detailed accounts of private collections and exhibitions of pictures at the Royal Academy and elsewhere, besides the Norfolk church screens and wall-paintings—some of which are now lost—recorded and illustrated by Harriet Gunn. The artists Thomas Phillips and John Sell Cotman were known personally to the Turners and figure in some of their activities.

The only significant body of correspondence not connected with the family is a sequence of some ninety letters written by Turner’s friend and business partner Hudson Gurney (KK1–4). Gurney’s regular commentaries on local businesses and the state of the national economy are counterbalanced by discussions on books, manuscripts, and antiquities, his forays into Norfolk, and his abiding love of London life—the preoccupations of an urbane man who once reported that he had snapped a tendon dancing with 'smart girls’.

The albums of ‘Etchings and Autographs’ (PP1–3) contain prints, cuttings, correspondence, and other manuscript material. Several of the letters are represented by copies in the main correspondence sequence, with notes by Turner showing that the originals belonged at one time to his extensive collection of autographs (these are not at Trinity). The correspondents are, in the main, Turner’s academic acquaintances and minor public figures. Their letters range in content from brief formal messages to discourses on natural history, publications, business, and local affairs. Not all are addressed to Dawson Turner—a good many are to the Palgraves—and some were not written during his lifetime.

Diaries kept by Frederic Watkyn-Thomas (36 items, 1926-1963); diaries kept by Diana Watkyn-Thomas (27 items, 1929-1952), including her "Diaries of the War" series (12 volumes, 1939-1943) with another war diary not so titled from 1944. Both series include holiday diaries jointly written by husband and wife, describing their regular fishing trips to Scandinavia and Iceland and long summer stays there.

Frederic revised all the diaries in the last ten years of his life, adding dates and specifications such as '?Our last visit to Kolåsen' (B25); he also used a printed diary for 1956 to create a summary of the main events of his life from 1906 onwards, recording events on each day in previous years such as theatre performances, letters received, reunion dinners in College and holidays. He also revised the commonplace books in which he collected newspaper cuttings, wrote book revisions, reported conversations, and noted his observations on specific subjects throughout his life; in these revisions he added dates, subjects, and re-arranged the contents.

The papers consist of correspondence, diaries, subject files, writings, other Whewell papers, family papers, and later papers of others. The family papers include those originally gathered by Whewell's first wife Cordelia (née Marshall) and his second wife Lady Affleck (née Ellis). The papers of Lady Affleck's brother and Whewell's friend Robert Leslie Ellis now form a subset of this collection.

Sixty-six lectures on constitutional history written in Winstanley's hand on loose sheets of paper, each headed with a lecture number and title, accompanied by a holograph book list relating to study of the 16th century and an incomplete lecture/review? on George I and his relationship with his Cabinet and Secretaries of State. The items are undated but presumably date from one of Winstanley's tenures at Cambridge, i.e. 1906-14 and 1919-35.