Bessie to Barbara: 166 letters, 1846-1880; Barbara to Bessie: 20 letters, 1847-1861. Some of the letters have been transcribed: where a transcript exists for a given letter, this is indicated in the catalogue entry.
The letters from Bessie to Barbara, particularly those written in the 1840s-60s, include frequent mention and discussion of close friends, colleagues, etc, including the following:
Anna Blackwell (sister of Elizabeth Blackwell);
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910, physician);
Sam Blackwell (cousin of Elizabeth Blackwell, an ironmaster, who courted Bessie Parkes for many years, d. 1867);
Jessie Boucherett (1821-1905, campaigner for women’s rights);
Ellen Cantelo (circa 1825-1898, artist);
John Chapman (1821-1894, publisher);
Isa Craig (later Knox, 1831-1903, poet);
Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876, American stage actress);
Marian Evans (George Eliot, 1819-1880, novelist);
Emma Evers (a protégé of Bessie’s);
Emily Faithfull (1835-95, publisher and women’s activist);
Henry Fawcett (1833-84, economist and politician, who proposed marriage to Bessie);
Lucy Field (schoolfriend of Bessie’s);
Jane Benham Hay (born 1829, artist);
Matilda Mary Hays (known as Max, 1820?-1898, writer and journal editor);
Anna Mary Howitt (1824-1884, painter, writer and feminist);
Mary Merryweather (b. circa 1826, first matron of Westminster Hospital; a Quaker who worked for the Courtauld family business, she organised schools for the children of workers and other social services and met Bessie in 1856);
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910, reformer of nursing organisation);
Adelaide Procter (Mary Berwick, 1825-1863, poet and women’s activist);
Maria Rye (1829-1903, social reformer and promoter of emigration).