[Sir Charles Oman, military historian.] Three Autograph Letters Signed (all ‘C. W. C. Oman’), as Librarian of All Souls College, to ‘Mr Harlow’ of Rhodes House Library, regarding his proposal about ‘the long series of Cape Parliamentary proceedings’.

See Oman’s entry in the Oxford DNB. Each letter 1p, 12mo. Each folded once. All three in good condition, lightly aged. The correspondence concerns Harlow’s proposal, according to the letter of 2 June 1937, ‘that All Souls College should present to the Rhodes House Library the comparatively few yearly numbers of the Cape Parliamentary proceedings 1875-1910 which are not already in either the Bodleian or the Rhodes House shelves - keeping for the College the residuence, a broken set of about 200 volumes’. In the first letter Oman states that he will place the suggestion before the library committee, adding ‘I must confess that it seems to me rather a crime from the point of view of a library to break a complete set. We shall perhaps be able to find some institution in London which would like the entire file’. He nevertheless sympathizes with Harlow’s ‘plea that a duplicate (or almost duplicate) set in your shelves would be a burden’. In the second letter he writes that he does ‘see the point’ of Harlow’s proposal: ‘avoidance of duplication’. In the last of the three letters, which Oman signs ‘C. W. C. Oman / Librarian A. S. C.’, he informs Harlow that the library committee have voted ‘that it was prepared to present to the Rhodes House Library the volumes 1875-79 of the Cape Parliamentary reports, and the odd numbers of Appendix 1 2. 3 and n7 of 1883, and 1 of Appendix II of the same year. The Committee intends to keep and dispense of the other volumes of the long set’. Harlow is invited to send for the Rhodes House volumes.