Cataloguing the collection began at the beginning of May. The material was purchased in December from the executors of George Sassoon, the only child of Siegfried Sassoon, via Sotheby’s auctioneers. The sale inventory compiled by Sotheby’s has provided enough detail to allow the identification of the main groups, or in archival jargon ‘series’, into which descriptions of the collection will be arranged. Ideally the archivist aims to preserve as much of the ‘natural’ or ‘original order’ of the material as possible whilst also creating a logical structure of ‘categories’ that allows the researcher to readily identify material of relevance to their work.

So far the following series and sub-series have been identified:

• Journals
• Sporting notebooks
• Commonplace books
• Legal and accounts
• Poetry notebooks
• Material relating to prose works:
  • ‘The Old Century’
  • ‘The Weald of Youth’
  • ‘Siegfried’s Journey’
  • General
• Critical writings
• Correspondence
• Photographs
• Printed matter
• Papers of other individuals:
  • Katherine Gatty
  • The Gatty family
  • Hester Sassoon
  • Rupert Hart-Davis
  • Dom Wulstan Phillipson
  • George Baker

Once this structure is a little clearer more detailed descriptions of the series (such as covering dates) will begin to appear under the classmark MS Add.9852 amongst the Cambridge University Library Department of Manuscript’s other catalogues displayed online  at:

http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0012