| Description | This file is not mentioned in the "Catalogue of Papers, M.B.’s Counting House" compiled by William D. Brown about 1791, but, as no other family correspondence is listed in that Catalogue, it appears that such letters were merely kept elsewhere.
Copies and drafts of a few letters from Matthew Boulton to his son are interspersed among the incoming letters. The originals, or fair copies, of most of these (viz. 18, 28, 30, 33, 34, 37, 38, 41, 42) are in the Matthew Boulton file among M. R. Boulton’s own papers. And, as well as Matthew Boulton’s correspondence with his son, the file contains, in separate sequences, correspondence with Monsieur Manuel, with whom M. R. Boulton stayed while in Paris, and the Rev. F. H. Reinhard, with whom M. R. Boulton stayed while in Germany.
The contents of the file are therefore arranged in three chronological sequences, as follows:
Correspondence with M. R. Boulton.
Correspondence with Monsieur Manuel.
Correspondence with the Rev. F. H. Reinhard.
Many of M. R. Boulton’s letters from the Continent show signs of having once been fixed into a letter book by means of paper tabs.
In the following List, unless otherwise stated, the copies are press-copies.
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