Title and statement of responsibility area
Title proper
Correspondence
General material designation
Parallel title
Other title information
Title statements of responsibility
Title notes
Level of description
Series
Reference code
Edition area
Edition statement
Edition statement of responsibility
Class of material specific details area
Statement of scale (cartographic)
Statement of projection (cartographic)
Statement of coordinates (cartographic)
Statement of scale (architectural)
Issuing jurisdiction and denomination (philatelic)
Dates of creation area
Date(s)
Physical description area
Physical description
97 cm of textual records. - 3 photographs : b&w and col. ; 15 x 9 cm or smaller
Publisher's series area
Title proper of publisher's series
Parallel titles of publisher's series
Other title information of publisher's series
Statement of responsibility relating to publisher's series
Numbering within publisher's series
Note on publisher's series
Archival description area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Bertram Rolland Davis was born in Bristol in 1897. Financial and familial situations prevented him from attending University, and after high school he began to work for the cable company established by his father, where he would stay for forty years. When not working he spent his free time as an amateur scholar with an interest in the Romantics and their links to Bristol. In particular, his interests tended towards former Poet Laureate Robert Southey and boy poet Thomas Chatterton. He corresponded with many of the leading Romantic scholars and critics of the twentieth century including Raymond D. Havens, E.H.W. Meyerstein, Maurice H. Fitzgerald, and Earl Leslie Griggs, and others. Davis also played an active role in preserving the history of Bristol and its famous residents.
To support his research, Davis purchased as many documents relating to the Romantics as he could afford. He amassed a collection of forty-five manuscript groups comprised of original documents by Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and their contemporaries as well as an extensive library relating to his academic interests. His library is known as the Bertram R. Davis “Robert Southey” collection.
After Davis’ death, his personal library, manuscript groups, correspondence, and research files were acquired by the University of Waterloo.
(Bertram R. Davis / Kenneth Curry.)
(Catalogue of the Bertram R. Davis "Robert Southey" Collection / compiled by Jane Britton. -- Waterloo: University of Waterloo Library, 1990.)
Custodial history
Scope and content
Series consists of approximately 5,900 items of correspondence between 165 correspondents. Includes correspondence to and from Bertram R. Davis, correspondence to and from unknown correspondents, and correspondence between others. Also includes two files of correspondence on a specific topic. One file is on portraits of Southey and the other is on the Portugues author Jose Maria de Eca de Queiroz.
Correspondents include:
- All American Cables
- Baldwyn, L.
- Bathietwell, William
- Beddoe, Dorothy
- Bell, Whitefield Jr.
- Bennett, Rhoda
- Bentley, G.E. Jr.
- Bernard Quariten Ltd.
- Blunden, Edmund
- Boots Cash Chemists
- Boult, Nellie A.
- Boyce, R.R.
- Brace, Keith
- Bremer, Heather
- Bremner, Robert
- British Council, The
- British Museum, The
- Bronson, Bertrand
- Browning, Daphne DuMaurier
- Buchan, Alexander M.
- Cabral, Adolfo De Oliveira
- Cabral, Maria de Gloria Ramos de Oliveira
- Calme, John
- Carnall, Geoffrey
- Cartwright, Revd. Canon R.F.
- Cascas, Artur Simoes
- Charles Lamb Society Bulletin
- Cheyne, A.D. Gordon
- Christ’s Hosptial
- Coburn, Kathleen
- Collis, Ivan
- Crook, Arthur
- Crowsley, Ernest G.
- Curry, Kenneth
- Darbshire, Helen
- Davis, Annabel
- Davis, Doris
- Davis, Watson
- de Eca de Queiroz, Antonio
- de Eca de Quieroz de Castro, Maria
- De Sousa-Lead, J.
- do Ceu Costa, Maria
- Early, Benjamin W.
- Early, Margaret Sue
- Edward, P. Welson
- Espstein, Jason
- Faliscue-Brickdale, Matthew
- Filler, Louis
- Fisher, Dorothy
- Fitzgerald, Maurice
- Flack, Ellis
- Flack, G. Ellis
- Fox, Levi
- Gandy, Norman
- Gardner, WH.
- Garlick, Kenneth
- Gayford, J.C.
- Gibbs, Donald T.
- Goodland, Alice
- Green-Armytage, R.N.
- Griggs, Earl Leslie
- Haller, William
- Harris, Roy
- Haugh, W.S.
- Havens, Raymond D.
- Heaton, P.
- Highman, Norman
- His Excellency the Portuguese Ambassador
- Hoover, Ben
- Hope, Warren T.
- Hough, Henry B.
- Howe, H.W.
- Hynes, Mary
- Kaderley, Nat Lewis
- Kaderly, Nat Lewis
- Kaufman, Paul
- Keens, R. Lyall
- Kew, S.F.
- Kopaitic, Boris (Commander)
- Kuhn, A.J.
- Kurahashi, J.
- Lamoine, Georges
- Laverick, D.M.
- Lee, Chi-Pui
- Lindsay, Philip C.
- Looker, Samuel J.
- Lowes, John Livingston
- Mabbott, Thomas Ollive
- Manogue, Ralph Anthony
- Mansfield, John
- Mason, A.S.
- Massey-Stewart, John
- McElderry, Bruce Robert
- Merritt, Theodore E.
- Metford, J.C.J.
- Meyerstein, E.H.W.
- Middendorf, John H.
- Middleton, Arthur Pierce
- Miller, C.A.
- Mooman, Mary
- Moore, R.W.
- Morgan, P.F.
- Morley, E.J.
- Morris, Christopher
- Munday, Katherine
- Mure, G.R.G.
- New House Museum
- Nowell, Charles
- Nunes de Silva, Henrique
- Ober, Warrun U.
- Ormond, R.L.
- Osborne, Edgar
- Peck, Walter Edwin
- Penney, Clara L.
- Pinney, Hester
- Pinto, Abranches
- Pleasance, Antony C.
- Polhemus, George W.
- Prabhakar, T.
- Pugsley, N.S.E.
- Purchase, J.L.
- Raepe, Elizabeth
- Ramos, Charles
- Rawnsley, E.F.
- Rawnsley, H.D.
- Reeves, Florence S.
- Rich, Norman
- Rodgers, Betsy
- Ross, Archibald
- Ross, James
- Russell, P.E.
- Shaffer, Elinor
- Shaver, Chester L.
- Simmons, Jack
- Smith, Elsie
- Smith, H.G.
- Sproule, Hugh
- Sypher, Gale
- Sypher, Lucy
- Sypher, Wylie
- Taylor, Donald
- Taylor, L. Acland
- Taylor, Rachel
- Thompson, J.E.
- Thone, Frank
- Times Literary Supplement, The
- Times, The
- Times, The
- Turnbull, J.M.
- University of Toronto Quarterly
- Usher, H.W.F.
- Wakefield, [?]
- Waller, Robert
- Wallis, F.S.
- Wasserman, Earl R.
- Watson, Rowland
- Wells, Charles
- West, S. George
- Whalley, George
- Whiting, F.
- Wilkinson, Norman B.
- Williams, M.G.
- Williams, Rev. H. Fulford
- Wilson, R.A.
- Woof, Robert
Notes area
Physical condition
Some letters from Kenneth Curry (files 75a and 75b) have fire damage. These have been placed in plastic enclosures.
Immediate source of acquisition
Arrangement
Language of material
- English
- French
Script of material
Language and script note
English, with some French.