Livingstone’s letters ‘saved for the nation’
A COLLECTION of nine recently discovered letters by the Scottish explorer David Livingstone has been ‘saved for the nation’ after being bought by the National Library of Scotland.
The previously unpublished letters were written after January 1857 while Livingstone worked on Missionary Travels, his narrative of his journeys and discoveries in central Africa.
The letters reveal how the national hero feared that unauthorised versions of his travels would impact on sales of his own official account – and how he even thought of abandoning his work as rival publishers tried to cash in on his fame. One letter to his publisher, John Murray, also reveals how he wanted illustrations of African people to depict them as ‘good looking’.
The documents – kept together for more than 150 years by a descendant of Robert Cooke, who worked for John Murray – were sold to a mystery bidder at Bonhams auctioneers in London last week, for a total of £24,062.50.
The National Library of Scotland has revealed that it was the bidder. John Scally, national librarian and chief executive, said yesterday: ‘As a major repository for David Livingstone papers and custodians of the John Murray publishing archive, we are delighted to have secured these letters for the nation. The letters shed light on his popular accounts of his explorations of Africa, including Missionary Travels, arguably the bestselling travel account of the Victorian age.’
In one letter Livingstone is frustrated with rival publishers who, keen to cash in on his fame, were producing volumes claiming to have been written by him.
The explorer likens them to ‘hyaenas – low, dastardly, greedy hideous brutes – much given to cowardly filching’.