Beschreibung:

Papers and photographs of the Collings family of Southwold, principally of Dr Dudley Willis Collings (1870-1955), first curator of the Southwold Museum and town doctor, his son Herbert Dennis Collings (1905-2002), anthropologist in Malaysia and the Far East, and of Dennis's wife Eleanor, née Jaques (1906-1962), Dennis and Eleanor being best known for their close – in Eleanor's case romantic – friendship with Eric Blair ('George Orwell'), the collection comprising often over-lapping material relating to both life in Suffolk and Dennis's researches in Africa and the Far East, the latter collected in Mozambique between 1924 and 1927 (work which, on his return to Suffolk, cemented his friendship with Orwell) and from 1934, when he and Eleanor left Suffolk for Singapore, where he had been appointed Assistant Curator at the Raffles Museum, in Java and, above all, in the Malay Peninsula, continuing with his work from 1952 as curator of the Ghanaian State Museum and the Portuguese fort of Dalmina, up until his return to Suffolk in 1961; (i) the cornucopia of Suffolk-related material includes: a run of Dr Collings's medical appointment books (for 1903-1908, 1910-1911, 1916-1918, 1928-1930, 1933, 1935-1939), recording consultations with both of Orwell's parents, especially his father in the months leading up to his death, noted as occurring at 8 a.m. on Tuesday 27 June 1939, as well as with members of the Jaques family and others in their circle; cashbook for the medical practice, Herbert & Tripp, from October 1902, later entries (from October 1914) in Dr Collings's hand; minute book of the Balfour Natural History Club, Highbury, kept by Dr Collings as president, 1888-1891 (covering its first to last meetings); file of Dennis's retirement archaeological work in Suffolk; student lecture and notebooks; esoteric ephemera (flying saucers, fellowship of Isis etc.); scrapbook of H.P. Jaques, 1930s; numerous family letters; photograph album kept by Dennis in Southwold and environs between 1914 and 1928; a folder containing correspondence of the Suffolk Naturalists Society, including a series of letters by the entomologist Claude Morley to Dr Collings; archaeological offprints, photographs of exhibits in the Southwold Museum; records of the Southwold Museum, Archaeological and Natural History Societies; antiquarian material; a good deal of printed ephemera including town guides etc., such as Dr Collings's annotated interleaved annotated copy of Jenkins, Story of Southwold (1948), and much else; (ii) the extensive ethnographic material includes: Dennis's files for a pioneering dictionary probably begun in 1940 and continued in the later 1940s of the Semelai language, the Aslian dialect spoken by one of the orang asli groups of Malaysia inhabiting the region between Johore and the Pahang River, comprising upwards of 1500 cards in a wooden card index box, plus nine small quarto notebooks, mostly recording words and phrases in Semelai and Temoq (several signed and dated, Singapore or Raffles Museum, 1940, including one headed "Orang Kanak"); annotated Reconnaissance Map of Parts of Upper Perak and Ulu Kelantran; folder of news clippings and manuscript notes on the Sakais of Malaysia; galley proofs of Dennis's article 'The Orang Laut' (of Singapore); with a very large quantity of photographs and negatives, either in folders or albums or loose, including albums of negatives or positives negative of 'Semelai' (Penang, 1947), 'Prehistory of Malaya' (artefacts and sites), 'Jakun' (1947), views in Mozambique (1926), 'Malaya', 'Perak' (1947), photographs of the Makondi and other East African tribes; photograph albums kept by Dennis between 1925 and 1926 in Msangi and Marari; two albums of 1925-6, showing the Moini, Makonde, scenes in Chiwanondo, Mpanji, Ruvuma Valley, lion hunting in Ruvuma, etc., and much else