Contents

Collection Overview

Biographical Note

Scope and Contents of the Collection

Organization of the Collection

Search Terms

Elizabeth P. Richardson Papers, 1865-1998

Finding Aid

Finding aid prepared by Rachel Dwyer.

Encoding funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

2003

Biographical Note

Elizabeth Power Richardson was born on August 28, 1922 in Newton, Massachusetts. She attended Smith College, graduating in 1943. Elizabeth Power Richardson was the supervising editor at McGraw Hill College Division, specializing in the physical sciences. She continued to work as a freelance editor after she married American Foreign Service officer W. Garland Richardson in 1949.

Richardson's interest in Virginia Woolf began at the age of twelve, when she first heard Flush read out loud. She began collecting articles for her Virginia Woolf scrapbooks in the early 1940s, with the idea of creating a book that would track the fluctuation in Woolf's reputation. Although this project was abandoned, Richardson's interest in Woolf continued as she accompanied her husband abroad to countries such as Suriname and Japan. Unfortunately, her first library of early editions of Virginia Woolf was dropped into Yokohama Harbor by mistake en route from Monrovia, Liberia, to Tokyo. But Mrs. Richardson continued to collect, expanding her collection to include members of the Bloomsbury Group and others associated with Virginia Woolf. Over the years her "working collection" grew to include nearly two thousand volumes along with numerous scrapbooks of ephemera. Richardson was inspired by Roger Fry's statement that "the really useful collector [is one] who by merely bringing objects together, classifying them, interpreting their interrelationships creates new values altogether."1

While living in Suriname, Mrs. Richardson began creating illustration lists for the books in her collection and continued to do so after her return to the United States. Indexing photographic reproductions of the Bloomsbury Group became a passion, which eventually resulted in Mrs. Richardson's meticulously researched publication A Bloomsbury Iconography (Winchester: St. Paul's Bibliographies, 1989). Soon after her bibliography was published, she moved from her home in Geneva, New York, to Northampton, Massachusetts. In 1985, Elizabeth Richardson presented to Smith College a photograph album compiled by Leslie Stephen in 1895. Mrs. Richardson's children presented their mother's Bloomsbury Iconography Collection to the Mortimer Rare Book Room after her death in 1998.

1 Richardson, Elizabeth P. A Bloomsbury Iconography. Preface. St Paul's Bibliographies, 1989.

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Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Elizabeth P. Richardson Papers consist of 15 linear feet of material, dating from 1865 to 1998. Types of materials include correspondence, a collection of scrapbooks containing articles and images related to Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, reading notes, drafts of essays, notes and galley proofs for Richardson's A Bloomsbury Iconography , and artwork. This collection was assembled by Elizabeth Power Richardson and donated to Smith College in 1998. Original correspondence from Elizabeth Richardson was donated by Panthea Reid and J. Howard Woolmer. Tony Bradshaw donated letters written to Barbara Strachey. The papers are arranged in six series.

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Search Terms

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Organization of the Collection

This collection is organized into six series:

• I. Correspondence of Elizabeth P. Richardson, 1961-1998
• II. Scrapbooks, 1905-1998
• III. Personal Papers, 1963-199?
• IV. Subject Files, 1865-1997
• V. A Bloomsbury Iconography, 1979-199?
• VI. Oversize

Arrangement of the Collection

The papers are arranged in six series.

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Series I. Correspondence of Elizabeth P. Richardson, 1961-1998 1.5 linear feet

This series includes correspondence relating to Richardson's book A Bloomsbury Iconography. Correspondents include museums, libraries, publishers, and Woolf scholars and authors, such as Joanne Trautmann Banks, John Bicknell, Elizabeth French Boyd, Angelica Garnett, Diane Gillespie, B. J. Kirkpatrick, Panthea Reid, S. P. Rosenbaum, Richard Shone, and Barbara Strachey. Particularly extensive is Richardson's correspondence with Quentin and Anne Olivier Bell, Leonard Woolf scholar Frederic Spotts, and J. Howard Woolmer, bookseller and author of A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1938. A folder of permission letters for A Bloomsbury Iconography (Box 4, folder 128) completes the series.

Arranged alphabetically by correspondent.

Series II. Scrapbooks, 1905-1998 7.5 linear feet

This series consists of thirty-two scrapbooks compiled by Elizabeth P. Richardson. The scrapbooks include clippings and photocopies of articles and reviews of works by and about Virginia Woolf (Boxes 5-9, 30), articles about the Bloomsbury Group (Box 10), and articles about peripherary figures, such as Julia Margaret Cameron (Box 29). Also included are photocopies of dust jackets, photocopies of obituaries, indexes Richardson created for books related to Bloomsbury, and ephemera.

Arranged chronologically.

Series III. Personal Papers, 1963-1998 1.5 linear feet

This series consists of seven reading notebooks, loose notes on photographs of the Bloomsbury Group, and drafts of Richardson's writings, excluding A Bloomsbury Iconography. Also included is the Ribblesdale Lear Scrapbook, in which Elizabeth P. Richardson presents her research on the copy of Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense owned by Thomas Lister, fourth Baron Ribblesdale (Mortimer Rare Book Room 825 L47b 1889). The Ribblesdale family used this book as a guest book, encouraging family and friends, such as John Singer Sargent, to color the illustrations (Box 36). Two audio recordings are also included in this series: one in which Richardson reads Moments of Being by Virginia Woolf and another entitled "A taste of green olives" (Box 38) in which Richardson discusses her Bloomsbury collection and her interest in Virginia Woolf.

Arranged chronologically.

Series IV. Subject Files, 1865-1997 1.25 linear feet

This series consists of nineteen items, including photocopies of novels, articles, and essays related to the Bloomsbury Group. Also included is a video recording of a performance of A Room of One's Own by Eileen Atkins (Box 41, Folder 166) and a T-shirt featuring a caricature of Woolf.

Arranged alphabetically.

Series V. A Bloomsbury Iconography, [1979]-[1991] 2 linear feet (10 items)

This series consists of working papers for Elizabeth P. Richardson's A Bloomsbury Iconography. The series includes a fragment of an early draft composed in 1979 (Box 42, Folder 167), two later drafts, and corrected galley proofs. Also included are illustrative material, including original sketches by Sarah Black for Appendix A (Box 44, Folder 180), and a typescript of A Bloomsbury Iconography (Boxes 46-47).

Series VI. Artwork, 1923-1996 .5 linear feet ( 4 items)

Arranged alphabetically by artist.

Series VII. Oversize .75 linear feet (16 items)

Series I. Correspondence of Elizabeth P. Richardson, 1961-1998

Series II. Scrapbooks, 1905-1998

Series III. Personal Papers, 1963-1998

Series IV. Subject Files, 1865-1997

Series V. A Bloomsbury Iconography, [1979]-[1991]

Series VI. Artwork, 1923-1996

Series VII. Oversize