[author’s copy]

[Talbot crested notepaper]

M^r Crookes

Lacock
Sat^y 20 Nov

D^r Sir

Perhaps the best way of showing the extreme minuteness and fidelity of Ph^c Engr^g w^d be the following. If you like to employ a first rate photographer to photograph on glass a page of your journal the News reducing it to one half or to one third of its dimensions I would engrave it on steel and easily make 4 or 5 duplicates so as only to give excellent impressions. ^<1> For this purpose the glass photograph ought to be beautifully executed. But there are many persons in London who could do it perfectly well.

You will let me know what you think of this idea.

Please to inform me who is your "contemporary" who speaks ill of the invention – I should wish to send him a few good specimens – If after that he remains obdurate, I leave him to his own opinion.

Yours truly
H. F. Talbot

[illegible deletion] You will oblige me by mentioning the Editors address or his office.

I see by the advertis^mt of your almanac, that one chapter of it is entitled Chronology of Photography If this chapter is not yet printed off, I sh^d like to see a proof of it, as perhaps I could assist you in the Chronology.

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Notes:

1. In the early days of photography, WHFT demonstrated its reproductive powers by making reduced photographic facsimiles of printed pages, such as the cover of the 1846 Punch Almanack. He could do this just as well with his new Photoglyphic Engraving process, offering a demonstration copy of a page of Crookes's Photographic News.