Dear Sir,
I am this moment favoured with your Note of the 10th, <1> and with the Calotypes for which I beg to thank you. They are very good, tho’ the personal identity of the [three?] may be questioned. I fear the Chess party <2> has failed from your not adding it. I am busy collecting materials for the Article in the Edr Review. <3> – I have [sic]
I have got your 4th Acct of Photogenic Drawing, <4> but neither Davy’s Paper <5> nor Daguerres <6> Publications. I should like to see Netto’s Pamphlet, <7> but I beg you will write me the substance of it in a few lines. It will do well along with your 4th Paper for Books on the Calotype to be placed at the head of the Article.
If you could without inconvenience lend me for a few weeks any pamphlets or works you think useful they would reach me in time if sent to the Care of Messrs Smith Elder & Co. <8> Booksellers Cornhill London.
A Brother of Dr Adamson <9> who has been educating as an Engineer is willing to practise the Calotype in Edinr as a Profession. I have twice discussed the matter with Dr A & will let you know more particularly about it in a few days after talking with Mr Adamson <10> who has been well drilled in the art by his Brother.
I have also the Compte Rendus <11> & other periodicals you mention.
Ever Most Truly yrs
D Brewster
H. Fox Talbot Esqr
Notes:
1. Not located.
2. WHFT is known to have made 10 images of chess-players. [See Larry J. Schaaf, The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 124.] If the reading ‘the three’ is correct, it might refer to the image known as ‘From the Life’ [see again Schaaf, p. 138].
3. This was a combined review of four photographic publications in the Edinburgh Review, v. 76 no. 154, January 1843, pp. 309–344, with a supplementary note in April 1843, v. 76 no. 156, p. 563.
4. It is unclear which of WHFT's publications this was - Brewster's review cited WHFT's original 31 January 1839 paper read before the Royal Society and published privately (London: R & J E Taylor, 1839) and in various journals, Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or the Process by which Natural Objects may be made to Delineate Themselves without the Aid of the Artist’s pencil.
5. Humphry Davy (1778–1829), ‘An Account of a Method of copying Paintings upon Glass, and of making Profiles, by the agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver. Invented by T. Wedgwood, Esq. With Observations by H. Davy’, Journals of the Royal Institution, v.1 n.9, 22 June 1802, pp. 170–174.
6. Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851), French artist, showman & inventor.
7. Dr F. A. W. Netto, Die Calotypische Portraitirkunst (Quedlingburg & Leipzig: 1842).
8. Smith, Elder & Company, printers & publishers, London.
9. Dr John Adamson (1809–1870), physician and pioneer of photography. See A. D. Morrison-Low, ‘Dr John Adamson and Robert Adamson: An Early Partnership in Scottish Photography’, The Photographic Collector, v.2, 1983, pp. 198–214.
10. Robert Adamson (1821–1848). His professional partnership with the painter David Octavius Hill (1802–1870), Scottish painter & photographer, which began in May 1843, established – at the dawn of photography – the art of photographic portraiture at the highest level. See Sara Stevenson, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 1981), and The Personal Art of David Octavius Hill ( New Haven & London: Yale UP, 2002).
11. Comptes Rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’ de l’Académie des Sciences.