Dossier 5 - Letters from John William Burgon

64 items

These letters were lent by R. H. Inglis Palgrave to Edward Meyrick Goulburn when the latter was writing his biography of Burgon, having been cut for that purpose from Turner’s letter-books some time before the end of 1890, when they were presented to Trinity.

Goulburn began work on his biography of Burgon after resigning the deanship of Norwich on 23 April 1889, and it was probably completed by 18 September 1891, the date of the Preface. It was published the following year in two volumes under the title John William Burgon, late Dean of Chichester: a Biography, with extracts from his letters and early journals. The writer observed that the extracts from the letters lent to him by Palgrave constituted ‘the chief interest of the early part of the work’, but he appears to have been unaware of the fact that Palgrave had selected from the volumes a mere third of the letters from Burgon, including only one of the first forty-five (see the Index, O.14.51). It is not clear why he was furnished with such a small selection, nor what principles directed Palgrave in making it.

The borrowed letters were apparently returned to the family, though it is unclear when. Some of them bear pencil annotations in Goulburn's hand, and he has left among them two separate notes (A5/20b and A5/27b).

Most of Burgon’s letters were written at one or other of the following places: 11 Brunswick Square, London, the home of his parents, where he lived intermittently till 10 March 1842; 34 Osnaburgh Street, Regent’s Park, his parents’ residence from 1844; the parsonage at Houghton Conquest in Bedfordshire, home of his brother-in-law the Rev. H. J. Rose, where he was a frequent visitor, particularly during the university vacations; Worcester College, Oxford, where he resided from about 21 October 1841, the date of his matriculation, and 20 November 1845, when he took his BA; and Oriel College, Oxford, of which he was elected a fellow on 17 April 1846. A5/1 was written at Norwich, just after Burgon’s first visit to Dawson Turner at Yarmouth, A5/20 at the Angel Hotel, Oxford, where he stayed with Rose while matriculating in October 1841, and A5/31 at Stoke Newington, where his parents apparently lived between their departure from Brunswick Square and their removal to Osnaburgh Street.

In notes on publication Goulburn = John William Burgon, late Dean of Chichester: a Biography, with extracts from his letters and early journals, by E. M. Goulburn (2 vols., 1892).