Papers from the Harold Blundell (George Bellairs) Book Collection

The following series comprises 22 items of loose material found inside several of the autographed English editions of the collection of Blundell's published detective stories donated to the Library with his manuscripts. The majority of the correspondence consists of letters from Blundell's friend, Dr William Brockbank of Manchester, in which he makes mostly favourable comments, on Blundell's work, and there is also correspondence from the mystery writer Francis Iles or Anthony Berkeley Cox, Harold Blundell's wife, Glwadys, the Reverend Edgar Calvert of Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, and several others. Also included is a thank-you card from the Manx Museum of the Isle of Man dated 20 November 1952 regarding Blundell's presentation of a signed copy of his work, amongst other material.

The inserted papers have been removed from their corresponding volumes, marked with the reference numbers of the books to which they corresponded, arranged into a chronological sequence which takes into account the date of composition and the date of publication of the published work from which it was taken. The catalogue entries for each item in the series have been given two reference numbers; one is the new document number, such as BLU/8/1-21, while the one below gives the accession number of the corresponding book for contextual purposes, for example R151228. The final item (dated 1956-7) is out of sequence, as this was discovered after the catalogue was completed.