Sassoon archive arrives at Cambridge University Library

Retained in the possession of the poet’s son until his death in 2006, the Sassoon Archive was the most important collection of any major First World War poet’s papers still remaining in private hands.

The collection includes the war diaries Sassoon kept on the Western Front and in Palestine between 1915 and 1918, together with notebooks ranging from records of his schoolboy cricket scores to post-war journals tracing his turbulent personal life and the progress of his literary career.

Sassoon’s childhood and wartime experiences profoundly shaped the development of his writing life, and the archive also contains drafts of his classic autobiographical trilogy The Old Century, The Weald of Youth and Siegfried’s Journey.

When the Archive came on the market last year, Cambridge University Library was immediately identified as the most suitable home for the collection. Sassoon was an undergraduate at the University and later became an Honorary Fellow of Clare College, and the University Library has for many years been a leading institution in the preservation of his autograph manuscripts and letters. The combination of the Library’s extensive existing Sassoon holdings and the new material has created the world’s pre-eminent resource for the study of Sassoon’s life and works.

University Librarian Anne Jarvis said: “We are delighted to have secured the future of the Sassoon archive, and to be able to make these extraordinary documents available in the University Library. This outcome is a source of both satisfaction and excitement to all those who have worked so hard to make it possible.”

The purchase has been made possible by generous funding from charitable institutions, grant-awarding bodies, and members of the general public. The National Heritage Memorial Fund offered a grant of £550,000 and other substantial grants have been made by The Monument Trust, the J. P. Getty Jr Trust and Sir Siegmund Warburg’s Voluntary Settlement, augmented by valuable support from bodies such as the Friends of the National Libraries, the B. H. Breslauer Foundation, the John Murray Charitable Trust, Clare College Cambridge, and the Library’s own Friends organisation. Many private individuals, convinced that the Archive should remain intact and accessible in the United Kingdom, contributed sums ranging from a few pounds to thousands of pounds.

The Library’s success in meeting its fundraising challenge has been widely welcomed. Author Sebastian Faulks, whose acclaimed novel Birdsong revolves around soldiers’ experience of the First World War and the memory of succeeding generations, said: “This is a major coup for Cambridge University Library, and the papers will be of huge benefit to scholars both of literature and of history.”

Poet Sir Andrew Motion said: “The Sassoon Archive that has been acquired by the University Library is of the greatest importance, nationally and internationally. As a memoirist and as a poet, Sassoon occupies a unique place in the history of writing in English – someone who combines writerly, political and social significance to an exceptional degree. Their purchase is wonderful news.”

The Archive will now be conserved, sorted and catalogued by the University Library’s professional staff. In July 2010 a major display of the Library’s Sassoon collections will open in its Exhibition Centre, bringing together documents from the newly-acquired Archive and a selection of the Library’s other Sassoon treasures.

Exhibitions Officer and literary manuscripts specialist John Wells said of the war diaries: “Everyone who sees these documents is thrilled by the vital immediacy and poignancy of the meaning they convey. We can hardly wait to put them on show to the public next year.”