AUDEN, John Bicknell (1903–1991)

Archive of letters, photographs, travel documents, and two offprints, relating to his travels and geological work, 1930s–1980s

Largest document 195 x 280mm; approx. 70 separate documents

A revealing personal/professional archive, showing the trials and tribulations of John Auden’s adventurous scientific life.

J.B. Auden was the older brother of Wystan Hugh Auden (1907–1973); he studied geology at Cambridge and began his career in the 1920s at the Indian Geological Survey. He was a keen explorer and mountaineer, and was the inspiration for (and dedicatee of) Auden and Isherwood’s Ascent of F6.

The earliest documents here date from the 1930s, inclduing an advert for Freya Stark’s Valleys of the Assassins. Three documents date from Auden’s time as surveyor of India’s dams. There are two substantial letters relating to his subsequent work in Sudan on the geological survey there – notably a very good letter from Frances Delany giving an account of the geology around Khartoum.

Subsequent letters are from Auden’s daughters Rita and Anita (both favourites of W.H. Auden). W.H. Auden himself sends a telegram on the occasion of his brother’s 50th birthday.A group of photographs shows John and his wife Sheila (née Bonnerjee), and sites in South Korea, Turkey and Afghanistan. There are travel documents, invitations, christmas cards and many trappings of a peripatetic life.

Also included are two offprints:

1. ‘The Indian-Chinese Boundary Dispute’, from The Geograhical Journal (1961)

2. ‘India’s Former Crustal Neighbours’, from the Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy (1981), with 4 folding maps; inscribed ‘To Sheila, who has borne with me for so long periods of doubt and even despair, fortifying with encouragement. With love / John 7.v.82’

Overall condition is very good indeed; photographs a little frayed around the edges, some documents fragile owing to paper stock but very well preserved.