JAMES FAMILY

This collection falls into two distinct groups. The first comprises documents relating to the novelist George Payne Rainsford James and his family, a total of about 350 items, and the second consists of documents relating to other families, either short series or isolated items.

G.P.R. James, 1799-1860, belonged to a well-known medical family; his grandfather was the inventor of Dr. James's Pills and Powders, and his father and elder uncle were both doctors. There are several wills and settlements among the papers (ACC/0976/136-155). James was a prolific writer, turning out nearly a hundred novels, besides works of a more serious historical nature. The manuscript of chapters 14-22 of the novel Ehrenstein is preserved among these archives (ACC/0976/163). There is a series of title deeds to an entailed estate at Hampton Wick and Teddington which James inherited when it was disclosed that his father's elder brother, Robert Harcourt James, had never married the lady always recognised as his wife and whose children were therefore not lawful heirs to the property. The estate was heavily mortgaged, and despite the success of his novels James appears to have been in serious financial difficulties.

His affairs cannot have been helped by the number of law-suits he engaged in with his various publishers (ACC/0976/156-171). In 1850 his difficulties made him decide to emigrate to Canada, but his friends managed instead to obtain for him the post of British consul in Norfolk, Virginia. He was not happy there, and in 1853 his friends petitioned the Foreign Secretary for another post considered to be more deserving of his personal qualities and abilities (ACC/0976/222).

In 1856 he was made consul-general in Venice, and he died there four years later