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Lot 127
WALLACE (ALFRED RUSSEL) Letters, books and publications from the collection of the geologist Percy Fry Kendall, comprising four autograph letters signed ("Alfred R. Wallace") to Kendall, nine volumes of works on geology by various authors and twenty-five offprints and pamphlets
15 June 2016, 14:00 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £4,750 inc. premium
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WALLACE (ALFRED RUSSEL)
Letters, books and publications from the collection of the geologist Percy Fry Kendall, comprising four autograph letters signed ("Alfred R. Wallace") to Kendall, confirming which photographs of glacial phenomena he would like him to supply for use in his forthcoming publication ("...at most two of each type...terminal moraine – Perched-block – ice-worn rocks – Roches-moutonées - striated boulder..."), and thanking him for his help ("...The glaciated boulder of Rhomb-porphyry is very interesting... I have not yet been able to get a clear and good photo of a good terminal moraine..."), the fourth letter tipped into a copy of Wallace's Studies, Scientific and Social, Volume I (London, 1900), presented to Kendall by the author, apologising for the delay in replying to his letter, curtly dismissing Kendall's theory that rock basins in highly glaciated districts are formed by very restricted earth movements and touching on the debate over the origins of man ("...no proof has ever been given...It seems to be exactly parallel to the unreasoning disbelief in the antiquity of man, which still leads the bulk of geologists to reject all evidence of his pre-glacial existence, often without careful examination..."), 11 pages, creased at folds, dust-staining, some pencil annotations by recipient, Parkstone, Dorset, 15 January 1900 to 3 August 1902; with eight other volumes including Volume II of Studies, Scientific and Social, and works by Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Percy Fry Kendall (The Geology of Yorkshire, volumes I and II, 1924) and others; with a group of twenty-five pamphlets and offprints, sixteen by Percy Fry Kendall, including The Red Crag of Walton-on-the-Naze, Glacier-lakes in the Cleveland Hills, The Proposed Tunnel under la Manche, The Physiography of the Coal Swamps and works on the geology of Yorkshire and Scotland, many signed and inscribed by the author to his son, and nine works on geology by other authors, including a copy of The Naturalist containing Percy Fry Kendall's obituary
Footnotes
'THE INSPIRATION TO A NUMEROUS BAND OF AMATEUR GEOLOGISTS'. Percy Fry Kendall (1856-1936) was held in great esteem by his fellow geologists, not only as a theorist but also as an educationalist. His main interest was in the field of Glacial Geology: 'In the historic conflict between the adherents of the two rival theories – Land-ice and Submergence – Kendall was one of the protagonists, and no one more than he, contributed to the final triumph of the Land-ice theory...' (Obituary, The Naturalist, July 1936). This conflict is touched upon in Alfred Russel Wallace's letter of 1902. Kendall published his seminal work Glacier Lakes in the Cleveland Hills in the same year and became Professor of Geology at the University of Leeds in 1904. He went on to advise the Royal Commission on Coal Supplies and was awarded the Lyell Medal by the Geographical Society in 1909.
Provenance: By descent to the present owner.