The 'Remaining Archive' of Siegfried Sassoon

Item author: Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)
Item date: 20th century
Grant Value: £25,000 (£10,000 from the Philip Larkin Fund)
Item cost: £1,250,000
Item cost pre-decimal: NULL
Item date acquired: 2009
Item institution: Cambridge University Library
Town/City: Cambridge
County: Cambridgeshire

Siegfried's son George Sassoon sold many of his father's papers, some of which were acquired by Cambridge University Library; the 'Remaining Archive' of papers in his possession at his death in 2006 include a series of war diaries and notebooks, 1915-19, containing journal entries, poems, prose compositions (including drafts of the celebrated 1917 statement against the continuance of the War), transcripts of other writers' works, pen-and-ink sketches and lists of casualties. The Archive also includes a larger set of post-war journals, largely unpublished, recording Sassoon's life to 1959; notebooks of fair copies of his own verse; notebooks recording his conversations with Thomas Hardy; notebooks and loose papers containing drafts of his autobiographical trilogy; and letters addressed to him, and his letters to Hester Gatty, whom he married in 1933.

Item Provenance
The Sassoon Family