1031 letters from over 50 years of correspondence.
Volume 1 (Letters from 1832-1868)
Volume 2 (Letters from 1868-1879)
Volume 3 and appendix (Letters from 1879-1882 and from "before 1830" to 1868)
We have available to us over one thousand of the letters which Mr Darby wrote. These are full of the most spiritual guidance, and in a special way show the heart of the author towards his Lord and his brethren. Knowing the names of the recipients at this distance of time is of considerable help in understanding the contents of the letters.
The following list has been compiled, after careful comparison with an early Morrish edition of Mr. Darby's letters, from a list of the correspondents of Mr. Darby which was in the possession of John S Blackburn, Keswick, England. The page numbers given are those of the later Heijkoop/Stow Hill edition which will be the edition on most bookshelves.
John Blackburn comments, 'The copies of JND's Letters from which I copied the information evidently were originally in George Davison's possession. No-one knows who wrote the names of the recipients, but Mr Morrish's daughter informed me that her father wrote the names of the recipients in his personal copies of the three volumes, and then sent the original letters back to the families concerned.'
Note for users of the booklet version: Some of the names (and a few of the dates) exhibit considerable variation, e.g. Maylon, Meylan, Maylan; this may be due to the quality of the writing in the originals. It would have been easy for the compiler to make them all the same as a known brother, but I resisted the temptation as I have not evidence that there were not three different people involved. Similarly Brown spelt with or without an -e, but with the same initials is fairly conclusive, in a few cases I have suggested a correction in brackets, but again I thought it good to leave the names as originally copied and leave any conclusions to the reader. (These have been changed in this web edition, but may be viewed in the Corrigenda.)
The layout of the pages should be self-explanatory:
The first column is a numbering of the letters in each volume.
The alphabetic character states the language in which the letter was written: E-English, F-French, G-German, I-Italian.
The second column gives the page (as S. H./Heijkoop editions).
The third column gives the name of the recipient.
The fourth column gives the place from which it was written.
The fifth column gives the date on which it was written.
About 3 in 4 of the correspondents are given. Where possible when the name is unknown an indication is given as to whether the recipient was a brother or a sister. Where no date is written against a letter, the date at the head of the page under which it was originally catalogued is given.
Published September 1995 by: L. J. L. Hodgett©
J. N. Darby, born 18th November 1800.
Departed to be with Christ 29th April, 1882 aged 81 years.