A fascinating and unusually long letter in Banks's typical open hand, penned in some haste to his friend, the antiquary and physician Rev. Daniel Lysons. The letter is written from Banks's grand country house, Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire, at a time when Banks was more involved than ever in far-ranging aspects of exploration and scientific discovery. Indeed, it particularly deals with a decades-long controversy arising from the papers of the former Astronomer Royal, Dr. James Bradley (1692-1762): Banks's involvement with the observatory at Greenwich as well as the Board of Longitude were part of his lifelong encouragement of improvements in mapping and navigation.

A fascinating and unusually long letter in Banks's typical open hand, penned in some haste to his friend, the antiquary and physician Rev. Daniel Lysons. The letter is written from Banks's grand country house, Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire, at a time when Banks was more involved than ever in far-ranging aspects of exploration and scientific discovery. Indeed, it particularly deals with a decades-long controversy arising from the papers of the former Astronomer Royal, Dr. James Bradley (1692-1762): Banks's involvement with the observatory at Greenwich as well as the Board of Longitude were part of his lifelong encouragement of improvements in mapping and navigation.

Banks was close to Lysons, not least being behind the latter's introduction to George III in 1794, but he was also following with the greatest interest the work of his brother, Samuel Lysons, who was then excavating the "Orpheus Mosaic" at a Roman Villa in Gloucestershire — indeed, in the present letter Banks explicitly refers to this archaeological project and the enthusiasm with which the find was being followed by the Royal Family and the entire "fashionable" world.

The closeness of their connection helps explain the informal tone of the letter, not least because Banks clearly knew he was treading on delicate ground. The controversy was a complicated one, involving both the very grand chancellor of the University of Oxford but also the reputation of the Greenwich observatory in the years when it was under the leadership of Nevil Maskelyne (who did so much to encourage Pacific exploration).

In short, Lysons was related by marriage to Bradley, who had died young, survived only by his daughter, a minor. This led to a notorious delay in publishing his last great work, the Astronomical Observations, the first volume of which only appeared in 1796, more than three decades after Bradley's death.

The letter is Banks's detailed and supportive answer to a letter Lysons had sent from Putney on this subject three days earlier. Lysons was keen to have Banks's opinion on a passage about the controversy he was about to publish in his famous Environs of London. Maskelyne, then Astronomer Royal, had given Lysons a potted history of Greenwich and had strongly expressed his belief that indifference from the University of Oxford had caused the unconscionable delay in publishing. In particular, Maskelyne had sheeted home much of the fault to Lord North, 2nd Earl of Guilford (1732-1792).

Banks, no stranger to scuffles in print, therefore jumped straight in to advise his friend Lysons in some detail, especially in terms of not offending the partisans of Lord North. His explicit concern throughout is based on his awareness that Lysons was very close to the Bradley family.

Letters from the Banks/Lysons correspondence are surprisingly uncommon, being known chiefly from the edited transcripts made by Dawson Turner in the nineteenth century, although one particularly good letter from Lysons is in the Banks Papers of the SLNSW.