(TRAVEL) Papers of Jean Elliott Dobbs an English immigrant a

Sale 2517 - Lot 224

Price Realized: $ 812

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600

(TRAVEL.) Papers of Jean Elliott Dobbs, an English immigrant and intrepid traveler. More than 500 items, (1 linear foot) in one steamer trunk; condition generally strong. Vp, 1910-52

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Additional Details

Jean Elliott Dobbs (1900-1991) was born in England and worked as an advertising copywriter before emigrating to the United States in 1930. She lived in Brooklyn and Sunnyside, NY, and travelled extensively in the American West through the 1930s. In 1938, she married advertising executive Arthur Thomas Dobbs (1904-1968), a fellow emigrant from England. Their correspondence reflects a growing horror of the growth of fascism in Europe. The collection includes two New York fliers in support of the Spanish Children's Milk Fund and International Antifascist Solidarity. It also includes 9 letters circa 1941-42 from their friend Austin Lewis (1865?-1944), a San Francisco leftist and activist with the American Civil Liberties Union.
An evocative series of letters was written shortly after her arrival in New York in 1930; numerous charming travel letters were written to her parents from Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and especially San Francisco in the 1930s, as well as several letters during an extended trip through South America in 1939. The lot also includes a thick file of letters to Jean from her husband Arthur; a portfolio of her advertising work; letters received from her English parents; and a small number of photographs--one showing Jean during her 1939 trip to Peru (illustrated).
In 1952, after the period of these papers, Jean and Arthur settled down in Wilmington, DE, where they ran a bookstore called "Books and Things" until his death. Jean was a resident of Andover, NJ at the time of her 1991 death.