GEORGE BRETTINGHAM SOWERBY THE FIRST AND HIS CORRESPONDENTS

Abstract

The correspondence of naturalists of the early nineteenth century, conducted on a much more voluminous scale than that of today, is often of considerable personal as well as scientific interest. Preserved in the Department of Zoology of the National Museum of Wales is a large file of correspondence addressed by numerous writers to the famous George Brettingham Sowerby the first (17881854), conchologist, author and artist, and dealer in natural history specimens. Although his scientific publications are not always easy to separate from those of his son, George Brettingham Sowerby the second (1821-84), since the two men worked together at times, the correspondence here discussed appears to be all addressed to the senior Sowerby.* It includes letters from many professional and amateur naturalists in this country who were well known in their time, as well as from correspondents in various parts of the Continent, in North and South America, and elsewhere; and the publication of them all would occupy very much more space than is available for a paper in this Journal. It is proposed to confine the present paper to letters from Mary Anning, Hugh Cuming, William John Broderip, James Robert Campbell and one or two others. During the 1820's Sowerby transacted a good deal of business with Mary Anning, the famous amateur collector of fossils at Lyme Regis, whose portrait hangs in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. On 27 July 1826 she wrote to Sowerby as follows: