Letters to My Fellow-Workers... For Private Circulation Only.

London: [various publishers,], 1873-1908. Presentation copy uniting the Hill sisters with one of their trusted "fellow-workers" An uncommon pamphlet volume of privately printed reports, affectionately inscribed by Octavia Hill to Joan Sunderland, one of her property managers, in recognition of diligent service. Two of the reports are also signed by Miranda Hill, Octavia's sister and fellow social reformer. The first Letter is inscribed on the title page, "For Miss Sunderland with sincere gratitude for her seven years help from Octavia Hill 1909". Miranda signs above as "M. Hill" and her full signature also appears on the 1883 report. Sunderland peppers the volume with pencilled annotations, from contextual notes - "Written while Miss Octavia Hill was abroad? after her breakdown she went on the continent with Miss H Yorke" - to briefer clarifications of names and locations, reading recommendations, and measured ticks against the accounts tables. She is particularly attentive to mentions of Red Cross Hall and Gardens in Southwark, one of Hill's earliest schemes. In one pamphlet Sunderland dates and initials her comment: "This is on the South Side of St John's Church Waterloo Road, now (1930) overgrown by creepers J.S.". Sunderland (1882-1940) trained under Hill (1838-1912) from an early age: "she was a very prized worker, for she routed around and found these various people who had rather lost contact" with Hill's initiatives (Brion, p. 76). In 1901 she became a manager in Lambeth and reported to Hill on a weekly basis. She played a significant role in maintaining the enterprise after Hill's death and wrote several articles on social reform including "The Prevention of Slums" (1927). During the First World War she worked for the Red Cross. Octavia Hill devoted her life to social housing reform and cultural philanthropy, though she is best remembered as one of the founders of the National Trust. During the 1860s she began acquiring and improving rental properties in London to combat poverty and overcrowding. Her network of "fellow-workers" - rent collectors, housing managers, and district visitors, mostly women, all trained and salaried - were early social workers. Octavia collaborated with her eldest sister Miranda (1836-1910) on several major housing projects across England, and they lived together from the 1880s. Octavia wrote very little for publication. She "began having her letters to fellow-workers printed when the volume of correspondence with her various helpers and donors made the continuance of a personal correspondence impractical. Each letter gave an account of the principal activities for the previous year, and was followed by the annual accounts. The first printed letter covered 1872, the last 1911 - the year before her death - and they appeared annually, with a very few exceptions. In spite of their growing popularity, Octavia resisted all attempts to persuade her to publish them" widely (Whelan, p. 82). Thirty-nine Letters to My Fellow-Workers were privately published. They never appeared in their entirety in book form, but the parts are sometimes bound together as here. The thirty-one Letters in this volume cover the years 1872, 1875, 1877 to 1881, 1883 to 1885, and 1887 to 1908. There are two additional works by Hill bound in: the articles "Management of Houses for the Poor" (1895) and "Housing Difficulties: Management versus Reconstruction" (1904). Two ephemeral pieces round out the assemblage: a slip advertising Miranda's play Rumpelstiltskin (written for the tenants' children at St Christopher's Place) and a leaf on which Octavia eulogizes her major financial supporter John Ruskin (1900). WorldCat and Library Hub record seven similar volumes; only that at the British Library is listed as having all 39 parts. The others are housed at Senate House Library, Oxford, Schweizerisches Sozialarchiv, Kwansei Gakuin University, Temple University, and Brigham Young University. The volume at Brigham Young includes the same two articles, suggesting some uniformity in their compilation. We trace just two other examples at auction, both presentation copies from Hill to, respectively, her sister Gertrude (30 parts) and her close friend Sydney Cockerell (14 parts). Three works bound in one vol., octavo (176 x 120 mm). Early 20th-century limp calf, spine lettered in gilt, raised bands, marbled endpapers, edges sprinkled red. Extremities gently rubbed, judiciously refurbished, joints starting but firm, contents clean, a few faint vertical creases to pamphlets from folding, page numbers of one trimmed in binding process: a very good copy. Marion Claire Brion, The Society of Housing Managers and Women's Employment in Housing, unpublished PhD thesis, City, University of London, 1989, accessible online; Robert Whelan, ed., Octavia Hill and the Social Housing Debate: Essays and Letters, 1998.