Although the activities of the first press established in the Ottoman Empire for theprinting of Turkish books, that of İbrahim Müteferrika which operated between 1927 and 1974, have been well documented, less is known about the circumstances under which printing in Turkish was revived later in the centurey. Two letters preserved among the papers of the British botanist and patron of science, Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820), however, throw interesting light on an abortive attempt to restart Turkish printing in the Ottoman capital under British auspices in 1779.