Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1888-1940 (Creation)
Level of description
Series
Extent and medium
1 box
Context area
Name of creator
Repository
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
J. G. Frazer's letters to Trinity Master Henry Montagu Butler (Items 4-21) are accompanied by a letter from his son Sir James Ramsay Montagu Butler sending the letters to the Frazers (Item 3), but there is no similar information for the provenance of the letters to William Crooke (Items 136-137), A. E. Housman (Item 142), William James Lewis (Items 22-38), and John George Adami, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool (Item 143).
A note in the card catalogue describes FRAZ 1/57-61, five letters from JGF to A. B. Cook as 'xerox copies of letters owned by P. Lazlett, TCC'. This is probably Thomas Peter Ruffell Laslett (1915–2001), Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Content and structure area
Scope and content
FRAZ/1-4 consists of four boxes containing just over 575 letters, most of them addressed to J. G. Frazer. The letters span 1888-1941, but the bulk date from the 1920s and 1930s, and primarily concern Frazer’s works and related personal business. An alphabetic sequence of letters spans the four boxes, preceded by a shorter one of 62 letters in FRAZ/1, and succeeded by a collection of 110 letters written to congratulate Frazer on the award of the Order of Merit in FRAZ/4. FRAZ/1 is unusual in that it includes the only original letters from J. G. Frazer in the papers (29 of them: Items 4-29, 39, 42-43); there are also thirteen typed copies of his letters in this box (Items 44-54, 82 and 84) dating from the 1930s, after Frazer's eyesight failed and a secretary was employed. There are 9 original letters from Lilly Frazer to William James Lewis (Items 30-38), and a copy of a letter from Lilly to Sir John Myres (Item 55). Three other copies of James's letters from the late 1930s appear in boxes 2-4 (Items 2/95, 3/43, 3/47), and there is also a draft of a letter to Lord Stamfordham in box 4 (Item 119). Two other copies of letters from Lilly appear in box 3: to R. R. Marett (Item 3) and Norman Parley (Item 44).