[‘I like to see myself all original authorities’: Sharon Turner, historian, author of the ‘History of the Anglo-Saxons’.] Autograph Letter Signed (‘Sh.n Turner’), instructing his booksellers to procure a rare book for him.

An idiosyncratic letter, revealing something of his working practices, and the relations between client and bookseller in the early nineteenth century. See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 12mo. From the collection of a painstaking Victorian autograph collector, who has unobtrusively repaired slight damage to a central fold. On lightly discoloured paper, with a thin neat strip from the windowpane mount adheres to the edges. The letter is signed ‘Sh.n Turner’ and the recipients are not named. The letter begins: ‘Gentn / I wo[ul]d thank you to get for me Rosellinis ‘I Monumenti dell Egitto’ / Tom I. Pisa 1832 8o / with an atlas & 30 plates / large folio - / and the parts which have been published since. / As it is an expensive work I will send you a draft for the amount on receiving it - but I see I shall want it to do my next Volume as satisfactory to myself as I wish - as I like to see myself all original authorities’. The recipients have written at the head of the letter: ‘24 Numbers of Plates Folio at 27/ per No. will becompleted in 40 Numbers, and must subscribe for the whole / 4 vols 8o published will be completed in 20 Vols / those will be gratis’.