MS 681 21

Reference code

MS 681 21

Title

Moulton-Barrett family papers: Edward Richard Moulton-Barrett (1916-1992)

Level

Series

Administrative / Biographical history

Edward Richard Moulton-Barrett (1916-1992) was the only child of Edward Francis Moulton-Barrett (1886-1966) and Evelyn Constance Ambler (1877-1971). He was educated at Tonbridge School and Pembroke College, Cambridge.

While studying in Austria, he assisted Jewish refugees in recovering possessions after they fled the Nazis. During the Second World War, Edward served as a British Army staff officer with the Royal Artillery in Khartoum and Nairobi, achieving the rank of Major.

Called to the Bar in 1939, he specialised in matrimonial law. He lived in London and, from 1956, at Great Comp, Platt near Sevenoaks, Kent.

Edward also lived in Jamaica for periods and was actively involved in charitable, educational, and cultural work on the island. This included the restoration of Barrett House at Falmouth and the upkeep of the family graveyard at Cinnamon Hill.

Edward was the custodian of the bulk of his Moulton-Barrett family papers, he had inherited from a number of his antecedents. In the 1960s, he allowed the bulk of papers, to be examined and arranged for publication in Kelley, Hudson et al.: The Browning Correspondence and shortly before his death, he donated the Moulton-Barrett family archive to Eton College.

Edward Richard Moulton-Barrett died in Miami, Florida, in April 1992.

Date

1916-1992

Extent & medium

4 files and 4 items

Content description

This series comprises personal family papers and photographs of and relating to Edward Richard Moulton-Barrett, including items relating to his interest in Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Provenance

Edward Richard Moulton-Barrett was the custodian of the bulk of his Moulton-Barrett family papers which he had inherited from a number of his antecedents. He accumulated the papers and had worked on them to a certain extent at his home Great Comp, Platt, near Sevenoaks in Kent, which he bought in 1956 and lived in its converted barn from 1971. In the 1960s he allowed Philip Kelley to arrange the papers for publication. Shortly before his death in 1992, Edward Richard gave the archive to Eton College Library.