Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1939-1951 (Creation)
Level of description
Extent and medium
6 boxes.
Context area
Name of creator
Repository
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
From Sept. 1939, Gow sent out typed copies of circular letters, predominantly to former pupils serving abroad. The letters contained news from Trinity and Cambridge, along with comments on Gow's Air Raid Precaution work, his reading, and other similar matters; personal notes were added for individual correspondents. Letters from Cambridge, published by Jonathan Cape in 1945, comprised the letters from 1939-1944.
'I hope you will forgive a letter which resembles a circular. It seemed to me that in these uncheerful times those in foreign parts might perhaps like rather more gossip than they usually get out of my correspondence, and that as the gossip would have to be more or less the same for all, it would be a good thing to duplicate it rather than write it all out separately for different people...' [from the first letter, 8 Sept 1939].
From Sept. 1939, Gow sent out typed copies of circular letters, predominantly to former pupils serving abroad. The letters contained news from Trinity and Cambridge, along with comments on Gow's Air Raid Precaution work, his reading, and other similar matters; personal notes were added for individual correspondents. Letters from Cambridge, published by Jonathan Cape in 1945, comprised the letters from 1939-1944.
'I hope you will forgive a letter which resembles a circular. It seemed to me that in these uncheerful times those in foreign parts might perhaps like rather more gossip than they usually get out of my correspondence, and that as the gossip would have to be more or less the same for all, it would be a good thing to duplicate it rather than write it all out separately for different people...' [from the first letter, 8 Sept 1939].
This section of Gow's papers comprises the letters which he received, both in response to numbers of the 'Parish Magazine', as it soon became known, and after the publication of the book.