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Document number: 03792
Date: 06 Feb 1839
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: ROGET Peter Mark
Collection: Royal Society, London
Collection number: MC 3.5
Last updated: 1st September 2003

Answer <1>

Bernard Str

R. Sq. Feb. 6/39

Dear Sir,

I cannot undertake to say what course ye Council <2> will take with regard to your paper. If it had been complete, I might have ventured to anticipate their prompt decision that it should be printed: but, in its present form, I fear there will be great difficulties in ye way of its publication in ye Transactions. You are, no doubt, perfectly warranted in withholding from ye public the disclosure of ye processes of which yoq have described the results in that paper: but from what I can collect of ye opinions of the members of ye Council, I rather believe they would think it best to defer its publication until you can render it complete by ye communication of ye processes themselves.

Perhaps, under these circumstances, you will deem it advisable to withdraw ye paper for the present, before a ballot is taken on the question of its publication.

I remain Dear Sir
yours very truly

P. M. R.

<at bottom, inverted: Mr H.F. Talbot

Notes:

1. This letter is a draft reply to Doc. No: 03791.

2. The council of the Royal Society objected to WHFT’s proposal to publish the whole of the paper ‘Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing’, which was read before the Society on 31st January 1839.