Explore 19th Century Scientific Correspondence (opens in new tab)

Interesting stuff. It is strange to me seeing how patronizing some of the correspondence ends up being with all the profuse thanks to the recipient for taking them in, under their wing, being a friend, etc. The subject matter in some ranges from scientific, to reminders of payments due, to questions in French about whether the Italian women are as attractive as English women.

For example: Letter from Benjamin Abbott to Michael Faraday, 1814.[0]

[0]https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday0039

Faraday's reply to Abbott, 1815 [1]

[1]https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday0046

Both comments are at the tail of the letter in French and their translation is in the footnotes.

I think Faraday was pulling Abbott's leg here so that he wouldn't be inclined to travel south to find out for himself. Like a fisherman would in protecting his favorite fishing holes.

Found nothing I was actually looking for, but also found neat/weird stuff by accident almost immediately. For example here's some incomplete record of Darwin and Lewis Carrol[1] passing notes. I'm sure much of the corpus is trivial like that, but always fascinating to see legends humanized.

[1]: https://epsilon.ac.uk/search?keyword=dodgson&f1-addressee=Do...

Loads of random notes from/to and about Babbage. When did letter writing like this slim down and all the long flowery language disappear?