John Buchan Letters

The Papers of Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd (Coll-25) include an archive of John Buchan's correspondence as the firm's co-director and literary adviser.

The archive consists of some 4,742 letters dating from 1909 to 1929. They discuss many of Buchan's own works, including the novels Greenmantle, Prester John, and The Thirty-Nine Steps. There is a particularly rich collection of letters dealing with Buchan's writings on the First World War, when he worked for the War and Foreign Offices, and was subsequently enlisted in the intelligence corps.

They also include many letters on works by other Scottish writers published, or considered for publication, by Nelson, including J. M. Barrie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Compton Mackenzie, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The letters are individually listed in handlist (H25.1) that may be consulted in Edinburgh University Library's Centre for Research Collections.

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John Buchan in Other EUL Collections

There is much material of John Buchan interest in other EUL collections, including files on his election as Chancellor of Edinburgh University in the University Archives, correspondence with Sir Donald Francis Tovey, references in the correspondence of Hugh MacDiarmid and Tom Scott, and critical and biographical material in the Papers of Marion Lochhead and Fred Urquhart.