Description

Description: Writing from the Natural History Department of the British Museum (Nov 19, 1862), Sir Richard Owen expresses his regrets for not be able to extend his stay at the Liverpool Royal Institution:

“My dear Sir, I have written to Col.Brown & I think it will be plain how impossible it is, & how grieved I am it should be so, that I cannot enjoy a longer sojourn in Liverpool, than my duty to your excellent Institution requires. Any official Documents or Historical Data rel. to your School of Science I shall be glad to receive at your leisure. Yours most truly, Richard Owen”

(Col. Brown could be William Richmond Brown, a Col in the Ist Lancashire Artillery, whose grandfather William Brown, a merchant banker, donated large sums of money to the Free Library, the Derby Library, and later the William Brown Library in Liverpool.)

Autograph letter signed on two pages written on black-bordered ivory laid paper 7” x 4 ½”.  Item #A01762

Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892) was a British anatomist, paleontologist, and outstanding naturalist who identified dinosaur fossils–calling them Dinosauria. He was a curator of the Hunterian collections, a professor of anatomy and physiology at the Royal Institution, and the superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum (1856-84). He initiated the creation of the current Natural History Museum in Kensington. He damaged his reputation in later years with his relentless criticism of Darwin’s work on the origin of species.

Condition: Has mailing fold lines, otherwise in very good condition.