S^t Brelade, Jersey
Nov^r 23 – 1858.

Dear Sir

In reply to your note of the 20^th Instant, I beg to say that it will give me great pleasure to receive from you a packet of proofs as you propose. Will you kindly direct it to me, to come by Southampton by Mail boat. The prints by your process which I have seen are wonderfully good – and I think promise great things. The distances shew so much atmosphere and there is so little grain that I am really greatly delighted with them – But I doubt the policy of trying the process on small stereoscopic subjects. I think you should issue large bold ‘artistic’ bits of natural scenery; much as drawing masters delight in to put before their pupils – for instance, a lump of rock, an old quay an anchor, a boat; an old stable, an old well with a bucket and broken pitcher, and so on. – I could soon get in Jersey a set of charming subjects of this kind, by the collodion process, and if you like I will do so and send you a negative or two to try. If you like them, and think well of the suggestion I should like nothing better than to join you in issuing a series of subjects of this kind – I think it would be the most useful application of your process, and that an immense number of impressions could be sold – Your process is certainly much better than Photo-galvanography. I think that for such subjects as I describe nothing could be better. The condition however ought to be that they are absolutely untouched by the engraver – that would strike all –

If I thought you would like to make the experiment I describe I could soon take you some negatives and you could select from them the prospects you liked best. A monthly album of Photo-glyphs would pay I have no doubt, or if it only covered its expenses there would be glory to be got by it.

When you send the parcel, please put into it any photographic curiosities you may have for me to look at and I will return them immediately –

Believe me dear Sir
Yours very faithfully
Thomas Sutton –

[envelope:]
H. Fox Talbot Esq^re
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham-
[annotated by WHFT:]
Tho^s. Sutton. S^t. Brelade. Jersey.

[there is another envelope, BL 20669, postmarked exactly the same, that WHFT annotated "Sutton. Norwich" to distinguish them - the letter for this (from the Norwich printing firm of Harper & Sutton) has yet to be located]