Letter 3374

Southwell just received the ‘first volume of Japan’, an English translation of Engelbert Kaempfer’s ‘Histoire du Japon’. He claims to possess manuscripts of a ‘Journall to Japan’, which would make ‘an Excellent addition & Confirmation of What is there said’. Southwell has an extra copy of the journal, which Sloane can keep. He discusses another book that might be worth printing: ‘the History of affairs in the Indies in 1674’. Edward Southwell was a politician and government official. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1692. By 1702 he was appointed Secretary of State for Ireland (D. W. Hayton, Southwell, Edward (16711730), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26060, accessed 8 July 2013]).