W. H. Wollaston MSS. at Cambridge

Abstract

In connexion with a long-projected biography of W . H. Wollaston, a number of notebooks and other MSS. relating to him, discovered in 1949 in the Department of Mineralogy and Petrology of the University of Cambridge, have been examined. They supplement a smaller quantity of similar material there, which was examined by the writer previously. A short preliminary record of the whole collection, and of the more important details about Wollaston which it discloses, seems desirable. These highly interesting papers are clearly part of those which were got together by Henry Warburton, F.R.S., after Wollaston’s death, for a biography which was never written. MSS. in W arburton’s hand are present, including brief tentative drafts of the beginning of the biography, going no further than Wollaston’s residence at Cambridge. His handwriting is also often seen in Wollaston’s own notebooks. Wollaston usually wrote his notes in pencil which he later more or less erased and inked in. Warburton did a great deal of this erasing and inking himself, possibly to make the notes clearer for permanent record. Some of this treatment may have been done under Wollaston’s direction during the latter’s fatal illness, when Warburton acted as an amanuensis in preparing papers for publication, and otherwise. Whatever the occasion for this tedious work, it affords a remarkable example of friendship.