WCP5144

Letter (cc) (WCP5144.5654)

[1]1

Aug[ust] 18 [1]902

D[octo]r. Alfred Russel Wallace

Sir,

28. 14. 102

Sir

FRS [?] [signature in initials]3

[2]

We return you herewith, Mr Wesley’s4 letter from the Royal Astronomical Soc[iet]y.5

We have had a photo of the Milky Way6 taken, and a block is now being made.

Messrs. Hutchinson7 tell us that it is impossible to get anything like a satisfactory block made of the Nebula ita [sic] Argus[.]8 The print in their Concise Knowledge Library is already second hand, and a block from that would be very bad.9

What shall we do with regard to this?

Yours faithfully | FRS [signature in initials]

1
Although there is no heading, the letter originates from ARW’s London publisher Swan Sonnenschein & Co., founded in 1878 by William Swan Sonnenschein (1855-1931) a son of Adolphus Sonnenschein, a teacher and writer originally from Moravia, and his first wife Sarah Robinson Stallybrass. In the light of the hostility to Germans during the First World War William Swan Sonnenschein changed his surname to Stallybrass for the remainder of his life, as did some of his family.
2
This appears to be a notice of payment to account for twenty-eight pounds fourteen shillings and ten pence (approx. £14.75).
3
The author is likely to be F. R. Stallybrass (see WCP5143 in the same hand). The author is presumably a relative of the founder of the publishing house.
4
Wesley, William Henry (1841-1922). Engraver, artist, astronomer and administrator, who was assistant secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society 1875-1922. He prepared diagrams for various scientific publications, including charts of the Milky Way and maps of the Moon's surface.
5
A learned society that began as the Astronomical Society of London in 1820 to support astronomical research, mainly carried on at the time by ‘gentleman astronomers’, rather than professionals. It became the Royal Astronomical Society in 1831 on receiving its Royal Charter from William IV.
6
The galaxy that contains our Solar System. Its name is derived from its appearance as a dim glowing band arching across the night sky whose individual stars cannot be distinguished by the naked eye.
7
Hutchinson & Co. was an English book publisher founded in 1887 by Sir George Hutchinson then succeeded by his son, Walter Hutchinson (1887-1950).
8
Eta Argus is the former name of Eta Carinae, a stellar system containing at least two stars with a combined luminosity over five million times that of the Sun, visible in the Southern hemisphere in the constellation Carina. It brightened considerably between1837-1856 in an event known as the Great Eruption.
9
The photograph of the Eta Argus nebula is in Clerke, A. M., Fowler, A., Gore, J. E. (1898). The Concise Knowledge Astronomy (Concise Knowledge Library) Miles, A. H. (Ed.) London, Hutchinson & Co., Section IV The Sidereal Heavens Chapter VI Clusters and Nebulae by J.E. Gore, page 523.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (cc) (WCP5144.5654)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2018-08-15]

Please cite as “WCP5144,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 9 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP5144