Egerton MS 3869

DAWSON TURNER: manuscript version of an 'Account of a tour in Normandy' based on three successive tours undertaken in 1815, 1818, and 1819 by Dawson Turner (b.1775, d.1858), botanist and antiquary; circa 1820. Copy, partly autograph. The account, which concerns chiefly the architectural antiquities, history and inhabitants of the Duchy, was published in two volumes by J. and A. Arch, (London, 1820). It is in the form of thirty letters supposedly addressed (according to f. 1 of the present MS) to the Rev. Jas. Layton B.A., Hatfield, Norfolk. Add. 28652 is an autograph draft of the same account, substantially amended, dated on completion (f. 370) July 16 1820. Insertions indicated on facing pages in Add. 28652 are incorporated in the main text in the present MS, but new additions, corrections to copyists' errors, amendments and annotations in Dawson Turner's own hand occur frequently. The present MS appears to represent an intermediate, though not the final, state between the draft and the printed edition (compare the redistribution of material in Letters 11 and 12 and omissions and expansions passim). The wording here is closer to the published version than that of Add. 28652, and chapter headings are present throughout, with two Appendices, List of Plates and two versions of the Index. Letters 1 to 3 (ff. 1-25 in Add. 28652) and part of Letter 5 are wanting in the present MS, and there are no inserted engravings. Letter 7 is altered in the heading from 5 and Letter 9 from 7 as in Add. 28652 (where the numbers of Letters 5-10 are all altered), but they are bound here in the correct order. Letters written on different tours have been redated in the published version to run in continuous sequence from June to August 1818. Evidence of this redating is seen in alterations made on the present MS, but it is not consistent throughout as Letters 13 and 20 retain dates of 1819 and 1820 respectively. The Account was adapted or quoted by Dawson Turner to form the text for the Architectural Antiquities of Normandy by John Sell Cotman (London and Yarmouth, 1822). Purchased from the Bridgewater Fund from P. M. Pollak Rare Books, South Brent, Devon, Nov. 1991.

Paper; ff. Leaves of various sizes, in marbled binding 335 x 210mm. Watermarks 1816-1818.