Series 16 - Letters of Thanks for the Downie Biography, Letter Miscellany, and Letters to Sir James George Frazer and Lilly Frazer (A-C)

1 box

FRAZ/16 consists of one box containing 131 letters and two writings which fall into three discernable groups with an unformed miscellany in the middle. Items 1-51 consist of letters written primarily to Lilly Frazer from friends and selected institutions to thank her for the copy of R. Angus Downie's biography 'James George Frazer: the Portrait of a Scholar' published in 1940. The letters date from June to October 1940, and many of the correspondents refer to life in wartime, including R. R. Marett, who writes on 12 June about his son Jack, missing after the attack on the HMS Glorious (Item 34).

Letters 52-70 are letters of congratulation on the award of the Légion d'honneur and date from March and April 1926. Items 71-98 are the miscellany, and include two writings, a group of Frazer's poems, and a speech made at Queen's College, London (Items 97 and 98). This group also includes Asquith's letter offering the knighthood in June 1914 (Item 82), and a typed copy of a letter from J. G. Frazer to Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (Item 74).

Letters 99-131 are the start of the alphabetic run that continues into box 17. The 168 letters in box 17 span the dates 1888-1940 with the bulk dating from the 1920s and 1930s, are addressed to J. G. Frazer and sometimes also Lilly Frazer and primarily concern J. G. Frazer's works and related personal business. The alphabetic run continues with 22 letters by Warren Dawson on the topic of the Frazer Lectures volume followed by 11 more letters related to the volume which interrupt the alphabetic order, a number of them relating to the question of omitting R. R. Marett's lecture from the volume. Two letters from Lilly Frazer to James Frazer, the only two letters between them in the papers appear here, Items 48 and 49, dated December 1904.

There are three speeches in FRAZ/17 as well: a copy of the speech by Canon Farrar at Durham University conferring the Honorary Doctor of Letters on Frazer (Item 42), a summary of a speech by René Maunier, President of the French Folklore Society (Item 47); Frazer's speech on being admitted an Honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple (Item 101).