Personal correspondence

APO/9

Personal correspondence

1 Aug 1876-1 Dec 1955

This series contains the correspondence received by Oppé from family, friends and colleagues.

The majority of letters were written by family members, which include his mother, his five brothers and two sisters, as well as his wife, Valentine, and his two children, Armide and Denys. The content of the letters is mostly concerned with general family matters and they are conversational in tone, although some contain discussion of intellectual matters, such as art, folk culture and literature. There are also many letters written during the First and Second World Wars, particularly from Oppé's brothers, Henry (see: APO/9/35-36) and Thomas (see: APO/9/44) who both served in the armed forces and died during the conflict.

The letters from friends and colleagues are varied in content, but predominantly cover his early adult life, including his education and academic career. Many of the correspondents are friends from his years at New College, Oxford, between 1897-1901.

There are also a small amount of letters that relate to his later life and his professional activities, both at the Board of Education and the V&A, as well as his art historical research.

The original order of the correspondence in this series was somewhat muddled. During the cataloguing processs, it was re-arranged into a sequence of files organised alphabetically by surname of correspondee. Where there are 6 or more letters from an individual, these have been given their own file (titled by the name of the correspondee). Where there are 5 letters or less from an individual, these have been filed into the appropriate miscellaneous file according to surname.

English

65 files

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