Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871)

Letters to and from the Herschels and associated material, as follows:

Items 1-93:
93 autograph letters by Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871), 1821-1871, n.d.
Correspondents include 'Professor Configliachi', probably Padua professor of physics Pietro Configliachi (1777-1844) (MS.7868/1-2); Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre (1749-1822), French astronomer (MS.7868/3); Michael Faraday (1791-1867), scientist (MS.7868/4); 'Captain Beaufort', probably the hydrographer Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort (1774-1857) (MS.7868/5); 'Captain Smyth', probably Admiral W.H. Smyth (1788-1865) (MS.7868/6-8); 'Mrs Fallows', widow of Fearon Fallows (1789-1831), astronomer (MS.7868/11); William Henry Harvey (1811-1866), botanist, including a silver-based negative photograph printed directly onto the letter (MS.7868/16); Professor Dominique François Arago (1786-1853), French astronomer and politician (MS.7868/20); Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851), painter and photographic pioneer (MS.7868/21); 'Murchison', probably Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1792-1871) (MS.7868/22-23); 'Edward' [Edmund] Belfour, Secretary, Royal College of Surgeons of England (MS.7868/24); R[obert] Hunt (including lot description from Stevens sale catalogue erroneously describing the recipient as John Russell Hind (1823-1895), astronomer) (MS.7868/31-46); Sir John Barrow (1764-1848), Secretary to the Admiralty (MS.7868/56); 'T.W. Brande', probably William Thomas Brande (1788-1866), F.R.S., chemist (MS.7868/62); 'Whewell', probably William Whewell F.R.S. (1794-1866) (MS.7868/66); William Hepworth Dixon (1821-1879), historian and traveller (MS.7868/74); Thomas Hodgkin MD (1798-1866) (microfilm printout from WMS/MF/3, reel 7) (MS.7868/79); Captain Kater of Regent's Park, London (MS.7868/84).

Items 94-95
2 signatures by Sir John Frederick William Herschel, n.d., one cut from a letter to Charles Richard Weld (1813-1869), Librarian to the Royal Society.

Items 96-97
Poetry: verse signed by Sir John Frederick William Herschel beginning 'Of man's first disobedience', 1858; incomplete poem in his hand beginning 'Beneath a rock's bleak heights whose towering brow/Frowned on deserted Strymon's flood below', n.d.

Item 98
Fragment of astronomical observations in the hand of Caroline Lucretia Herschel (1750-1848), 1792, with a note to this effect on the reverse by Sir John Frederick William Herschel, n.d.

1792-1871

1 file (in 2 parts) MS.7868/16 contains light sensitive material.

Database description transcribed from Richard Aspin and Christopher Hilton's typescript supplement to S.A.J Moorat's Catalogue of Western Manuscripts