Box 33 : Brontë Society-Burton, Richard F.

The Reference Materials section of the Symington Collection consists of typed transcripts, of items not present elsewhere in the collection as original manuscripts, together with printed materials, including images, clippings, pamphlets and other ephemera. These reference materials pertain to about 320 people and a few families. Almost half of the persons are represented primarily by historical prints or other images. Historical figures, artists, literary critics and, especially, authors are among those represented. For writers, in particular, there can be several folders of material which relate to: adaptations of works (e.g., plays, music or illustrations); bibliographical data (e.g., descriptions of books or manuscripts once offered for sale, compiled bibliographies, announcements of new editions); biographical materials (e.g., essays, clippings, documentation of anniversary celebrations); critical commentary (e.g., clippings, articles, book chapters, pamphlets); portraits, prints and photographs (e.g., prints removed from books); selected works (e.g., articles, extracts from books, pamphlets, typed transcripts); reproductions of manuscripts (e.g., sample pages or individual letters); and typescripts of letters (e.g., items sent and received, letters about the person). Individuals represented by seven or more folders include the Brontë family (especially Charlotte and Emily), Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edward Clodd, Austin Dobson, Edmund Gosse, Victor Hugo, Thomas Hardy, Walter Savage Landor, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Ruskin, Sir Walter Scott, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Theodore Watts-Dunton and the Fairfax family. The person most responsible for the reference materials is, of course, John Alexander Symington, who not only collected the documentation (including in connection with a Brontë bibliography), but who also augmented it by creating many of the typed transcripts and some of the bibliographical materials. The two other people most responsible for Symington's reference materials are Edmund Gosse (who created or owned various items, now filed under his name and in other subject categories, including some of the Swinburne transcripts) and Thomas James Wise (who might have had some of the typed transcripts made and who created various publications that are interfiled, usually in proof or incomplete copies).