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Document number: 6033
Date: 27 Oct 1847
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: BREWSTER David
Collection: National Science and Media Museum, Bradford
Collection number: 1937-4961
Last updated: 3rd February 2011

Dear Sir,

Having been from home I have not been able to write you in course of Post.

There are no separate copies of Articles ever published. I have been indulged with a few Copies for myself, and as I got a larger No of the Article on Photography, <1> I can let you have half a dozen if they will answer your purpose.

You would oblige me very much if you could give me a Copy or two of your views of Melrose Abbey. <2> The burying ground of my family is close to the South Front of the Nave, and as I am about to erect a monumental Tablet to one of my Sons <3> who perished while bathing in the Tweed, the Talbotype <4> would enable me to decide on the Nature & plan of the Tablet.

If you have any other Talbotypes that cannot be otherwise used I should be very glad to receive a few. I made a good use of those you sent me formerly, and I am sure I have circulated gratis upwards of a thousand of my own.

Believe me to be Ever Most Truly yrs
D Brewster

St Leonards College
St Andrews
Octr 27th 1847

over

P.S. Any packet sent to the care of Messrs Smith Elder & Coy <5> Booksellers Cornhill will reach me safely. Be so good as to let me know how to send the packet with the Article Copies of the Article on Photography.

Notes:

1. The North British Review was originally a journal of the Free Church of Scotland. Brewster’s "Article VIII - Photography" was published in v. 7 no. 14, August 1847, pp. 465-504, and was essentially a collected book review that he used to summarise the history and current state of photography. His sections were: 1. Researches on Light; An Examination of all the Phenomena connected with the Chemical and Molecular Changes produced by the influences of the Solar Rays, embracing all the known Photographic Processes, and new Discoveries in the Art. By Robert Hunt, Secretary to the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society. Pp. 304. London, 1844. / 2. A Treatise on the Forces which produce the Organization of Plants; with an Appendix containing several Memoirs on Capillary Attraction, Electricity, and the Chemical Action of Light. By John William Draper, M.D., Professor of Chemistry in the University of New York. royal 4to, pp. 324. New York, 1844. / 3. Nouvelles Instructions sur l’usage du Daguerreotype. Par Charles Chevalier. Paris, 1841. / 4. Mélanges Photographiques. Complement des nouvelles Instructions sur l’usage du Daguereotype. Pp. 128. Paris, 1844. /5. The Pencil of Nature. By Henry Fox Talbot, Esq., F.R.S., &c., &c. Nos. I., II., III., IV., V. London, 1844. / 6. Traité de Photographie, contenant tous les perfectionnements trouvée jusqu’à ce jour, appareil panoramique, différences des foyers, gravure Fizeau, &c. Par Lerebours et Secretans, Opticiens de l’Observatoire, et de lat Marine. 5me. Edit. Pp. 268. Paris, Octobre 1846. / 7. Des Papiers Photographiques, Procédés de M. Blanquart-Evrard et autres, avec Notes de N.P. Lerebours. P. 31. Paris, Mar. 1847. / 8. Excursions Daguerriennes. Collection de 114 Planches, représentant les vues et les monumens les plus remarquables du Globe. 2 Vols.

2. The ruins of the Cistercian abbey at Melrose, Roxburghshire. Brewster’s home, Allerly, was nearby.

3. Brewster’s second son, Charles Macpherson Brewster, was drowned in the Tweed in 1828. Talbot sent a view of Melrose Abbey [the same as Plate IX in WHFT, Sun Pictures in Scotland (London: Published by subscription in 1845)] and Brewster marked the family burial-ground on the print. See Graham Smith, Disciples of Light; Photographs in the Brewster Album (Malibu: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1990), p.134.

4. Although WHFT modestly used the term calotype, Brewster and other close friends chose to honour the name of the inventor, in parallel with the Daguerreotype.

5. Smith, Elder & Company, printers & publishers, London.

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