This is J.N. Darby’s correspondence collection, made up mostly of letters to Darby. It also includes notices, reports and other items. Many letters which are apparently addressed to Darby begin Dear Brother or some such. Where this is the case, a question mark has been inserted after Darby's name in square brackets, thus: [?].
A collection of photocopies of letters, which include these items, were held in the Christian Brethren Archive prior to the donation of the originals to the Archive. The photocopies were arranged in a card index, and numbered CBA 5540 (1) - CBA 5540 (543). The cards were also sorted thematically, and each group photocopied. The photocopied cards were placed into a bound handlist (CBA H2), which was widely used by Brethren scholars. The handlist states that, [w]hen the photocopies of the original documents ... arrived in the Library they were found to be arranged in alphabetical order according to correspondents. The catalogue numbers were assigned in this order ... In fact, the card index contains two separate sets of correspondence, each set in alphabetical order. The first CBA 5540 (1) — CBA 5440 (305), and the second CBA 5440 (306) — CBA 5440 (543). The present collection contains the first set of letters, along with twelve letters from the second sequence. The whereabout of the rest of the second set of letters is unknown.