Butler's passport
This passport was issued to Samuel Butler on 22 March 1895, for ‘travelling on the Continent’. On 30 March he set off for Turkey, to ascertain how far the descriptions of the localities in the Iliad matched up to the actual terrain of the Troad (the Biga Peninsula). His journey took him through Basel, Casale, Florence, Rome, Naples, Brindisi, Corfu, Patras and Athens, and he arrived in Turkey, via Chios, at the end of April.
In mid-May he returned via Palermo, Trapani and Calatafimi, to tell his Sicilian friends about his experiences in the Troad and how they had impacted on his Odyssey theories.
Conservation of Butler’s passport
The passport is one of a number of items from the Butler Collection to undergo conservation treatment, thanks to Heritage Lottery Funding for the Samuel Butler Project (2011-13).
For more than a century the paper document had been glued to the inside of a leather holder, and both were in a fragile condition. Professional conservators removed the document from the holder, flattened it and housed it in an archival mount so that it can be looked at without risk of tearing the thin paper. They also repaired and strengthened the leather holder and reinforced the sewing that holds the notebook pages inside.
Before conservation (above) and after conservation (below)
