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)