LIVINGSTONE DAVID: (1813-1873) Scottish Missionary & Explorer of Africa. A.L.S., David Livingstone,

LIVINGSTONE DAVID: (1813-1873) Scottish Missionary & Explorer of Africa. A.L.S., David Livingstone,

LIVINGSTONE DAVID: (1813-1873) Scottish Missionary & Explorer of Africa. A.L.S., David Livingstone, (the original signature neatly excised and replaced with a signature from a different letter, and in a slightly different tone of ink), four pages, 8vo, Albemarle Street, 12th December 1857, to 'My dear Moore'. Livingstone announces 'I really am very anxious to comply with your wish and no difficulty would be experienced if I could make one day of it only' although continues 'but time would be required for you to publish it and then so many things occur in my walk that I am obliged to postpone meetings and disappoint my friends. I have disappointed several and to disappoint you would give me immense pain'. Livingstone also adds that if he could see his way clear he would 'take a run down' to see Moore, although that would only be after his return from Portugal, and concludes by confessing 'I am quite in a whirl and will be glad when out of it and away from this country altogether'. Some light overall age wear, G £600-900

Livingstone's correspondent is likely to have been Joseph Moore (1816-1893) English Missionary and Pastor of Congleton Congregational Church in Cheshire 1848-88. Moore and Livingstone became lifelong friends after having met at the London Missionary Society in 1838. Correspondence from Livingstone to Moore exists between 1847-64 including a letter of 26th January 1858, written shortly after the present letter (which is not recorded in Livingstone Online). Livingstone is known to have visited Congleton, where he stayed for one night, on 29th January 1858. The explorer was at the height of his fame and engaged in a hectic schedule of nationwide speaking engagements. Although Congleton was not officially named as a venue for one of his lectures, when news broke that he was in the town, the local council urged him to speak at the local assembly rooms. Such was the interest in his presence that, due to local demand, his lecture was promptly followed by a second. The present letter is written from the Mayfair offices of the publisher John Murray who published Livingstone's Missionary Travels in the same year, 1857. Also in 1857, Livingstone was appointed as Her Majesty's Consul with a roving commission, extending through Mozambique to the areas west of it.