[Manuscript Letter from W. H. Fox Talbot to Antonio Bertoloni] 1839

This is a letter, dating to 1839, from the British photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot to the Italian botanist Antonio Bertoloni. Talbot penned it on paper, with ink made from a recipe of iron salts, gallic acid, and gum arabic, which was widely used at the time. The letter has a fascinating material quality; it’s light in weight, but dark in tone, because of the chemical processes at work. Talbot's choice of paper and ink imbued the text with cultural significance beyond just its literary content, and we can consider it as an artifact of 19th-century scientific correspondence. The labor involved in producing this letter goes beyond Talbot’s handwriting. It extends to the making of the paper, the production of the ink, and the transportation of both across borders. These material and social dimensions are crucial to understanding the full impact of this seemingly simple document.