Unbound copy press letters to various people

Folder of seventy-five letters and one drawing from James Watt to various people, 1777-1781. All but four letters and the drawing are copy-press letters. One of these is almost certainly the earliest surviving copy-press letter in the world. Several of the letters are very fragile and faint.

There is a bundle label, which reads : Press copies of Letters Written by Ja[me]s Watt from 1779 to 1781. Another hand has added: Mainly family letters.

The letters were not numbered. They were arranged in chronological order and this has been retained.

One letter, to the Rev. Deane, 2 Nov. 1780, which had been exhibited in the 1966 Lunar Society exhibition, had been given the teporary number JWP C1/27 when collected in 1994, but has now been replaced with this bundle.

Some letters have a note at the bottom or side of the paper with different chemical symbols which may indicate how the paper has been treated for the copying process. In the list, these letters have been marked with an asterisk (**).

A summary of each letter has been given by the cataloguer, in square brackets.

Letters to Joseph Black have been transcribed for the book Partners in Science, eds. Eric Robinson and Douglas McKie, (1970). The number of the published letter is given below at the end of the docket, as, for example, (Partners no.6).