Biographical note
Rudolph Beer was a botanist with private means who worked for a time at [the Royal Botanic Gardens,] Kew. At the time of his death during the war, on 23 September 1940, his large botanical library consisted mostly of pamphlets, periodicals, and textbooks. It was more or less thrown into an outhouse where it remained, deteriorating through damp, rats, and hooligans, until the death of Beer’s widow in 1961. The housekeeper then had the enterprise to get in touch with the Linnean Society and the Commonwealth Mycological Institute. Dr. Geoffrey Clough Ainsworth (1905–1998) salvaged what he could from the remains. Among these were letters from Agnes Arber, the originals of some of Beer’s papers, and reprints of these.

— William T. Stearn, British Museum of Natural History, 7 November 1962

Content note
This collection was received from William T. Stearn, British Museum, May 1962. It consists of nine file folders (ff), with one article per folder. Each folder, except for ff 9, contains a reprint and an original handwritten manuscript of the article.

Other resources
Biographical citations for this subject are available from the Hunt Institute biographical collection as a PDF.