Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1811–61 (Creation)
Level of description
Fonds
Extent and medium
About 1200 items
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Dawson Turner was born and spent much of his life at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. He was admitted as an undergraduate at Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1793, but returned to Yarmouth before graduating, in order to take his place in the family banking business.
For some years Turner's chief interest was botany, particularly mosses, and he published several works on the subject and corresponded with many of the notable botanists of his day. In later life he concentrated on antiquarian pursuits, amassing a valuable collection of historical documents and autographs, as well as a substantial library which was eventually dispersed in a series of sales. He was a Fellow of various learned bodies, including the Royal Society, the Linnaean Society, and the Society of Antiquaries.
In 1796 Turner married Mary Palgrave, by whom he had eight surviving children. Mary Turner and her daughters were talented amateur artists; they were tutored in drawing by John Sell Cotman and also mastered the arts of etching and lithography. Between them they produced a significant number of sketches and prints, especially portraits and architectural studies, examples of which were often used by their father to embellish his books.
Repository
Archival history
These papers were sold to the Library in 1991 by P. M. Pollak, a rare book dealer of South Brent in Devon, acting on behalf of an anonymous client. They comprise letters to Dawson Turner and letters to two men connected with him, Hudson Gurney and Sir Francis Palgrave, with a few items of doubtful provenance. It is not clear when or by whom these groups of papers were brought together.
Most of the letters to Turner were once in the main series of his correspondence, also in this Library, which comprises 82 letter-books and a general index (O.13.1–32 and O.14.1–51). These volumes were presented to Trinity in 1890 by Eleanor Jane Jacobson, Turner’s last surviving daughter, but before they came here a number of private letters, mainly from members of Turner’s family, were cut out by Turner’s great-granddaughter Elizabeth Palgrave (later Barker). This task was evidently carried out in some haste, for the cuts are often clumsy, and in many cases wide margins of text remain in the volume, while in others one or more adjacent letters were removed by mistake (these were either kept with the other extracted letters or left loose in the volumes). About the same time, probably a little earlier, a selection of letters from J. W. Burgon was removed and lent to Burgon’s biographer E. M. Goulburn. Some of the extracted letters came into the Library as part of the Second Series of Turner Papers (TURN II), deposited in the early 1970s, and the present accession contains some more, but a significant number of the extracted letters are still wanting.
The accession also includes a certain number of letters to Turner which were not in the main series, notably the remains of a volume of letters from Elizabeth Palgrave, which seem in turn to have been removed from elsewhere.
Nothing is known of the provenance of the letters to Gurney and Palgrave, but since they include both sides of the correspondence between the two men it seems likely that one was added to the other before they were added to Turner’s papers.
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
These papers include letters to Dawson Turner from members of his family, correspondence between Hudson Gurney and Sir Francis Palgrave, letters from Turner to Gurney, and a few other miscellaneous items.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
The papers of Dawson Turner, Hudson Gurney, and Sir Francis Palgrave each form a separate section (A–C), and the few additional items of doubtful provenance form a fourth (D). Within sections A–C the items are grouped by correspondent. See the Summary below.
Conditions of access and use area
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Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
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Description control area
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Dates of creation revision deletion
This description was created by A. C. Green in 2021 from a catalogue compiled by him in 2006.