H. Driver, Driver’s Bookshop, to Longmans, Green and Co.

31 October, 1931

Mellor Papers, Box 9, folder 2

Unpublished

Mellor’s passion for chemistry was so great that when quite young he confided to his friend Arthur Ellis (who would marry Mellor’s sister Agnes) that he was determined to become the foremost chemist of his generation. To assist this process, he built an iron shed of 1800 x 1800 mm in the back garden of his parent’s home where he could carry out after-work experiments. Books also helped, as the Dunedin bookseller Henry Driver recollected: ‘…Dr Mellor in his early student-day used to prowl about [my] shop in search of books on Chemistry.’