The William Kemp Collection
Epsilon’s William Kemp Collection comprises 80 letters (1840-1861) from the scientific and Scottish Borders community to William Kemp (1788-1864). Kemp was an engineer and businessman, manager of the Galashiels Gas Company, and a prominent local geologist. The collection includes a series of letters from Charles Darwin and Robert Chambers.
The letters were collated and bound into a single volume, and taken to Australia by John Kemp, a water engineer and son of William Kemp, when immigrating on SS Great Britain to Victoria in 1868. A full transcription of the collection was drafted in the 1980s in Australia by Ruth Cramond, a family connection. The collection was donated to Cambridge University Library in 2018 and has now been fully conserved and digitised.
Transcriptions, edited to Darwin Correspondence Project principles and practices, and images of the correspondence between Kemp and Darwin, together with a more detailed biography of William Kemp are available from the Darwin Correspondence Project website.
Images of all letters in the collection, including images of the original bound volume, are available from the Cambridge University Digital Library website.
Charles Darwin has asked for William Kemp’s address in order to send him a copy of his paper on Glenroy and to ask him some questions.
Encloses a copy of his Glen Roy paper. Asks for more details of Kemp’s work on the terraces of the Eildon hills.
The bearer of the letter, Thomas Smibert, is a friend of RC and his brother, William Chambers. RC would like WK to show him the raised beaches.
Thanks WK for his help recovering her belongings, and enclosing half a sovereign.
The bearer of the letter, Lady Scott Douglas, wishes to see the terraces at Galashiels if she can do so without exertion. Thomas Smibert’s visit has been delayed.