| Description | A collection of 36 autograph letters from Isambard Kingdom Brunel to Thomas Richard Guppy [1797-1882]. Guppy was the main promoter of the Great Western Railway and the SS Great Western, and a close personal friend to whom Brunel felt able to reveal his inmost thoughts. Some of the letters bear no dates but all were written between 1838 and 1840. They have been numbered by a later hand, possibly that of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the numbers revealing that some letters from the original collection were missing at the time of receipt by the University of Bristol Library. The letters have been individually referenced using these numbers; note that the references in this series are not consecutive. |