Item 88 - Letter from J. Clerk Maxwell to R. B. Litchfield

4 pp.

Bequeathed by Henrietta Litchfield (née Darwin) to Margaret Keynes.

Gift of Margaret Keynes, April 1952.

Glenlair. His aunt Mrs Wedderburn has learned of the murders of her cousin John Wedderburn and his wife and child in the Indian rebellion, and her son John and his wife in Moultan have had to disarm troops and dismiss others; is glad to have read the letter [Robert Henry Pomeroy’s last?]; reflects on Good and Evil; has almost finished with his work on Saturn’s Rings; illness continues in the house of the little girl who died.

Published in The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell P. M. Harman, ed. Cambridge University Press, 1990, vol. I, No. 131.

Part of a collection of fifteen letters from Clerk Maxwell to Litchfield dating from 1853 to 1858 (Add. MS c.1/78-91).

Letter marked "14" in red ink on front, with editorial marks throughout.