Autograph letters

Comprised of Autograph letters, signed (some fragmentary), previously held in the Western Manuscripts Department's Autograph Letters Sequence, including:

MS.7331/1-38: Letters from Sir Joseph Banks, 1787-1818. Recipients of letters include: Dr. Charles Burney (1726-1814) (no.24); Thomas Coutts (1785-1822), banker, concerning the imprisonment in France of the naturalist Robert Ferguson (fl.1768-1817) and a letter written by Banks to Lazare Carnot (1753-1823) on the subject (no.13); Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre (1749-1822) of the Institut National, Paris, the first letter mentioning Mendoza y Rios (1716-1816), astronomer, Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), traveller, and Étienne Marie Gilbert de Drée (1760-1848), mineralogist, the second the imprisonment of George Wilbraham F.R.S. (1779-1852), the third the release of the Chinese scholar Thomas Manning (1772-1840) and the continued capitivity of the orientalist Alexander Hamilton (1762-1824), the fourth mentioning the chemist Claude Louis Berthollet (1749-1822) (nos.16, 18, 20, 22, 26); William Eden, Baron Auckland (1744-1814) (no.27); William Farr F.R.S. (c.1730-1819), physician at the Royal Hospital, Plymouth (no.2); Charles Grevill.

MS.7331/39: Letter by Lady Dorothea Banks, c.1813. Letter by Lady Dorothea Banks (1758-1828), mentioning the medallist Benedetto Pistrucci (1784-1855).

1787-1818

39 items

Purchased from: Tregaskis, December 1927 (acc.68020 and 68021); Mrs. Barrett, London, March 1930 (acc.91327); Puttick and Simpson, May 1930 (acc.62824); Degranges, Paris, June 1930 (acc.67390); Foster's, June 1931 (acc.67577); Sotheby's, London, July 1931 (acc.67540), February 1932 (acc.76067 and 76072) and November 1933 (acc.67472); Stevens, London, July 1931 (acc.68194) and October 1932 (acc.68323); Glendining, London, February 1932 (acc.67677), March 1932 (acc.67624), November 1932 (acc.67740) and September 1933 (acc.67766); either Desgranges, Paris, January 1936 or Glendining, London, circa 1932 (acc.69293). No accession details of nos.1, 29, 30 recorded; provenance details of no.23 not recorded (acc.67430).

See also MSS.1049, 2826 and 5215-5219.

Database description transcribed from Richard Aspin and Christopher Hilton's typescript supplement to S.A.J Moorat's Catalogue of Western Manuscripts