Research Catalog

Title

Quentin Bell Family Letters to Alexander and Jeanne Jeffares.

Author

Bell, Quentin.

Publication

Lewes, Sussex : 1967-2001

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Bell, Julian, 1952-
• Bell, Anne Olivier.​.
• Jeffares, A. Norman (Alexander Norman), 1920-2005.

Description

86 leaves, + 21 postcards, 3 greeting cards, 2 invitations, 3 clippings, 1 slip and 4 envelopes : illustrations, photographs. portraits; 7-30 cm

Summary

• Comprises 48 autograph letters and postcards, signed, from Quentin Bell, to Alexander (Derry) and Jeanne Jeffares (1968-1987); with 15 autograph letters, signed, from Anne Olivier Bell to the Jeffares (1967-2001); and with 13 autograph letters and postcards, signed, from Julian, to the Jeffares (1968-1969); accompanied by clippings and miscellaneous correspondence, chiefly Christmas and birthday cards to the Jeffares, and by 8 autograph letters, signed, from Mott Betts to the Jeffares (1996).​
• 6 folders housed in manuscript box.
• Letters from art historian and Bloomsbury luminary Quentin Bell, and from his wife, Olivier, and from his son, Julian, to the pioneering Yeats scholar Alexander (Derry) Jeffares and his wife, Jeanne; with letters from Dr. Mott Betts to the Jeffares. 500: Among the miscellaneous correspondence are letters from William Empson and C. P. Snow.
• Several letters by Quentin Bell contain caricature sketches of himself.
• Quentin Claudian Stephen Bell (19 August 1910 in London – 16 December 1996 in Sussex) was an English art historian and author. He was the son of Clive Bell and Vanessa Bell (née Stephen), and the nephew of Virginia Woolf. He was a Lecturer in Art History at the Department of Fine Art, King's College, University of Durham from 1952 to 1959, and then served as the first Professor of Fine Art at the University of Leeds from 1959 to 1967. In 1964, he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University and, in 1965, Ferens Professor of Fine Art at the University of Hull. His wife was Anne Olivier; their son, Julian, named for Bell’s older brother, who was killed in the Spanish Civil War, was a muralist. Olivier spent 25 years editing the five volumes of Virginia Woolf’s diaries, and was instrumental in restoring Charleston, the country home of the Bloomsbury Group. She also spent 15 months in Germany after the Second World War as the only female officer among the so-called Monuments Men, an Allied band of 350 art historians and scholars responsible for protecting historic buildings and artworks from the ravages of war.
• Alexander (Derry) Jeffares (1920-2005) was a pioneering W. B. Yeats scholar and wrote extensively on Irish Lietrature. In addition, he published scholarly works on William Congreve, George Farquhar, Oliver Goldsmith, Maria Edgworth, Richard Sheridan, Jonathan Swift, George Moore, and Walt Whitman. He also published two volumes of his own poetry. Professor Jeffares joined the University of Leeds in 1957, as Professor and Head of the Department of English Literature. Four years later, he was appointed as the first Chairman of the School of English, established through the union of two previously separate departments. During his seventeen years at Leeds he played a vital role in making the university a thriving center for the pioneering study in Britain of Commonwealth, American, and Anglo-Irish literature. He was instrumental in setting up the International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature (IASAIL) in 1968, for which he was recognized by being named Honorary Life President of the Association in 1978. He was one of the founder contributors, and later Director, of the International Yeats Summer School, established in Sligo in 1960. In 1974, Professor Jeffares left Leeds to take a Chair at the University of Stirling, where he remained until his retirement in 1986.

Genre/Form

Caricatures – Great Britain – 20th century.

Access (note)

• Restricted access ;

Call Number

Berg Coll m.b. Bell, Q A.l.s. to Jeffares 1968

OCLC

960722512

Author

Bell, Quentin.

Title

Quentin Bell Family Letters to Alexander and Jeanne Jeffares.

Imprint

Lewes, Sussex : 1967-2001

Access

Restricted access ; request permission in holding division.

Connect to:

Request access to this item in the Berg Collection

Finding aid

Added Author

Bell, Julian, 1952-

Bell, Anne Olivier.​.

Jeffares, A. Norman (Alexander Norman), 1920-2005. Addressee

Research Call Number

Berg Coll m.b. Bell, Q A.l.s. to Jeffares 1968