London Museum Seeks $40,000 to Preserve Charles Dickens’ Manuscripts

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London seeks donations to preserve and restore three handwritten Charles Dickens manuscripts from acid paper rot. They hope to raise £25,000 (more than $40,000) to save the manuscripts.

The Guardian has a quote from John Meriton, the museum’s deputy keeper of word and image: “At the moment we can’t display these manuscripts safely because they are so damaged and so fragile … They were last conserved in the 1960s, when they were rebound and placed in what are called ‘guard books’. But the backing paper used, unfortunately, was very acidic, causing a lot of stress to the original manuscript leaves.”

According to the article, the collection includes A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield. The other manuscript, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was never published.  (Via CBC News)

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