Sir Geoffrey Keynes: Correspondence with Frank Huntley

Geoffrey Keynes was born in Cambridge in 1887. As a surgeon he was noted as a pioneer of blood transfusion and the treatment of breast cancer. As a literary scholar he is best known for a series of bibliographies, including studies of the publications of John Donne, John Evelyn, Sir Thomas Browne, William Blake, John Ray, Robert Hooke, Jane Austen and Siegfried Sassoon. The majority of his extensive library, especially strong in early books on medicine and surgery and in the authors of whose works he compiled bibliographies, is now preserved in Cambridge University Library. Keynes was knighted in 1955 and died in 1982.

Frank Livingstone Huntley was born near Hankow, China, in 1902, the son of medical missionaries. He was educated at Oberlin College and the University of Chicago. After various academic appointments in the United States and Japan he became a lecturer at the University of Michigan in 1945 and Professor of English Language and Literature there in 1955. On his retirement in 1973 he was made Professor Emeritus of English. A specialist in the literature of the seventeenth century, his books included works on Sir Thomas Browne, Joseph Hall and Jeremy Taylor.

71 letters, aerogrammes and cards from Keynes to Huntley, 24 Aug. 1949 - 2 July 1982 (MSS Add.9670/1-71). The letters touch on many scholarly, literary and social subjects, and the correspondents' interest in Sir Thomas Browne is well represented. The majority of the letters were written from Lammas House, Brinkley, Newmarket, with others from various addresses in London and elsewhere. MS Add.9670/10 is written on a letter to Keynes from R. W. David, manager of the Cambridge University Press. MS Add.9670/27 is a typescript copy of Keynes's letter, made by Huntley, with a note that the original is pasted in the front of the first volume of Keynes's six-volume edition of the Works of Sir Thomas Browne, donated by Huntley to the University of Michigan Medical Library. MS Add.9670/47 is a Christmas card from Geoffrey and Margaret Keynes, signed only by the latter. MSS Add.9670/55, 62, 68 and 69 are addressed jointly to Frank and Trink Huntley. MS Add.9670/59 is a printed card without annotation by Keynes.

With a typescript draft or copy of a letter from Frank Huntley to Keynes, 9 January 1982 (MS Add.9670/72); a card and four letters from Margaret Keynes to Frank Huntley (MSS Add.9670/73-76) and Trink Huntley (MS Add.9670/77), 1962-1969; a letter from Grace R. Osler to Keynes, 10 July 1922 (MS Add.9670/78); and an annotated typescript calendar of the letters, apparently compiled by Huntley (MS Add.9670/79).

Presented by Christopher Noel Huntley, March 2004.

Please cite as Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Sir Geoffrey Keynes: Correspondence with Frank Huntley, MS Add.9670

Letters from Huntley to Keynes are in CUL MS Add. 8633.

This finding aid was compiled by John Wells of the Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, April 2012.