ABSTRACT
ALL major and several minor collections that include letters written by Spencer have been identified. No attempt has been made to list every collection containing one or more of Spencer’s letters. In preparation for his autobiography, Spencer called in as many of his letters as possible. A broad selection of sometimes generously excerpted letters, both extant and (far more often) no longer existing, is found in Spencer’s Autobiography (item 23) and David Duncan’s official biography of Spencer—Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer (item 419). Spencer, for reasons which are not entirely clear, specified that his trustees eventually destroy his own letters (those recalled from correspondents). By chance, some of them escaped this fate.
