LIVINGSTONE DAVID: (1813-1873) Scottish Missionary & Explorer.

LIVINGSTONE DAVID: (1813-1873) Scottish Missionary & Explorer.
A.L.S., David Livingstone, two pages, 8vo, Albemarle Street, 2nd December 1857, to a gentleman. Livingstone politely declines a dinner invitation, explaining that he is 'going to Cambridge on Friday and may not get through my public speaking before Saturday afternoon'. With blank integral leaf (neatly mounted to a portion of a page removed from an album). VGThe present letter is written from 50 Albemarle Street, the home and office of the Scottish Publisher John Murray (1778-1843) from 1812. Literary London flocked to his house and Murray became the centre of the publishing world. The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa from 1865 to his Death were published in two volumes by Murray in 1874.On 4th December 1857, two days after writing the present letter, Livingstone was introduced at Senate House in Cambridge by William Whewell and the geologist Adam Sedgwick where, it has been reported, the large audience cheered Livingstone's concluding appeal for missionaries.Livingstone was one of the most popular national heroes of late 19th century Victorian Britain. His fame as an explorer and his obsession with discovering the source of the River Nile was founded on the belief that if he could solve that old-age mystery, his fame would give him the influence to end the East African Arab-Swahili Slave trade. His meeting with Henry Morton Stanley on 10th November 1871 gave rise to the popular quotation 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?'