40 years of correspondence between two leading orientalists in Russia, often concerning Georgian mat 1840 - 1879

Bernard Dorn

Paper
Currently unavailable via Gallerease

• About the artwork
  [21 autograph letters, signed, to Marie-Félicité Brosset].
  Saint Petersburg, ca. 1840-1879. 8vo (letters, mostly 21 x 13.5 cm) and folio (list of publications). Letters in French with an occasional (Persian?) word in Arabic script, written in black ink on paper, some with the address on the outside and one with Dorn's (Persian?) red wax seal in Arabic script.
  
  With: (2) [Manuscript chronological numbered list of 34 publications by Dorn, 1843-1865].
  [Saint Petersburg, ca. 1865].
  
  Signed autograph letters written over nearly 40 years by the German-born orientalist in Saint Petersburg, Bernard Dorn (1805-1881) to (or in one case for) his Paris-born colleague Marie-Félicité Brosset (1802-1880), mostly while Brosset was at the Hermitage Museum and Dorn at the Asiatic Museum, both in Saint Petersburg. The letters revolve around their mutual professional interest in oriental languages, particularly in Georgia (Tiflis is explicitly mentioned), and in numismatics. Dorn and Brosset were nearly the same age, came to Saint Petersburg at nearly the same time, and the present letters show that they also developed a close personal friendship, sometimes referring to their families.
  Some letters with embossed stamps. Some of the letters were sealed and therefore have small tears where Brosset broke the seals, but all are in good or very good condition. In 3 letters the ink has bled through a bit.
• About the artist
  Bernhard Dorn (1805, Scheierfeld – 1881, Saint Petersburg), full name Johannes Albrecht Bernhard Dorn, also called Boris Andreevich Dorn, studied theology and philology at Halle and Leipzig. Dorn was lecturer at the Leipzig University for some time. In 1829 he was appointed a professor of oriental languages at Kharkov University.
  
  In 1835 he was transferred to Saint Petersburg as a professor of history and geography in the Asiatic Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dorn also taught Sanskrit and Pashtu at the University of Saint Petersburg. He entered the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1839. He published several works on history and many studies about the languages he had mastered, especially the Afghan languages.