Notebook 23 - WMH (1)., 1975 - 1981

Two numbered sequences, Miscellaneous, 1-7, 1963-1974; and Notebooks 1-25, 1975-1981.

The foolscap notebooks contain for the most part work on the letters of Frances Hodgkins that E.A. Sheppard was authorised by the Alexander Turnbull Library to edit in 1975. The task was never completed. Letters of Frances Hodgkins, edited by Linda Gill, Auckland University Press, appeared in 1993. No mention was made in that publication of E.A. Sheppard's earlier involvement in the work.

The Notebook series contains many transcriptions of letters by Frances Hodgkins, as well by William Mathew Hodgkins. It may be assumed that E.A. Sheppard's transcriptions were not consulted for the final publication. Linda Gill acknowledges her debt to E.H. McCormick, with whom E.A. Sheppard was also closely associated in her work on the letters.

The Manuscript series also shows evidence of an interest in the poet Keats, and his friend Charles Brown, of whom E.H. McCormick published a biography, The friend of Keats: a life of Charles Armitage Brown, Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1989.