Reginald Lane Poole: Letters to him from F.W. Maitland

Reginald Lane Poole (1857-1939) was a lecturer in history at Jesus College, Oxford from 1886 to 1910, and a research fellow of Magdalen College from 1898 to 1933. In 1896 he was appointed university lecturer in diplomatic, and in 1909 keeper of the university archives, holding both posts until 1927. He was successively assistant, joint and sole editor of the English Historical Review from its foundation in 1886 until 1920.

Frederic William Maitland (1850-1906), son of John Gorham Maitland, was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied moral sciences (B.A., 1873; M.A., 1876). He was called to the bar in 1876, and thereafter became reader in English law at Cambridge in 1884, and Downing Professor, 1888-1906. He was the founder of the Selden Society, which sought to encourage the study of the history of English law, and served as its literary director in 1895. He was Ford's Lecturer at Oxford in 1897, and Rede Lecturer at Cambridge in 1901. He was also an honorary fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

The majority of the letters concern Maitland's contributions to the journal English Historical Review. There are also two letters (MS Add.7474/53-54) from Maitland to William Henry Stevenson (1858-1924), philologist and historian.

The letters (together with those from Lord Acton catalogued at MS Add.7472) were presented to Cambridge University Library in 1952 by Poole's younger son A.L. Poole.

Please cite as Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Reginald Lane Poole: Letters to him from F.W. Maitland, MS Add.7474

The letters were printed (except for items 9A, 10A, 53 and 54) in the Cambridge Historical Journal X (1952), 3, pages 318-351, together with Poole's surviving replies, and explanatory notes by A.L. Poole. They were reprinted, with the same four exceptions, in The letters of Frederic William Maitland, ed. C.H.S. Fifoot (CUP 1965). The four previously unpublished items were printed in The letters of Frederic William Maitland, volume II, ed. P.N.R. Zutshi (Selden Society 1995).

Poole's letters to Maitland (1901-05) are among the latter's papers in Cambridge University Library (MSS Add.7006/113-114, 137, 143, 147, 152, 159, 179;

7007/202, 239; 7008/328).