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More Letters of Charles Darwin By: Charles Darwin (1809-1882) |
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By Charles Darwin
A RECORD OF HIS WORK IN A SERIES OF HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED LETTERS EDITED BY FRANCIS DARWIN, FELLOW OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, AND A.C. SEWARD,
FELLOW OF EMMANUEL COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE IN TWO VOLUMES Transcriber's Notes: All biographical footnotes appear at the end of Volume II. All other notes by Charles Darwin's editors appear in the text, in
brackets () with a Chapter/Note or Letter/Note number.
VOLUME I.
DEDICATED WITH AFFECTION AND RESPECT, TO SIR JOSEPH HOOKER IN REMEMBRANCE OF HIS LIFELONG FRIENDSHIP WITH CHARLES DARWIN
"You will never know how much I owe to you for your constant kindness
and encouragement" CHARLES DARWIN TO SIR JOSEPH HOOKER, SEPTEMBER 14, 1862
PREFACE The "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin" was published in 1887. Since
that date, through the kindness of various correspondents, additional
letters have been received; among them may be mentioned those written by
Mr. Darwin to Mr. Belt, Lady Derby, Hugh Falconer, Mr. Francis Galton,
Huxley, Lyell, Mr. John Morley, Max Muller, Owen, Lord Playfair, John
Scott, Thwaites, Sir William Turner, John Jenner Weir. But the material
for our work consisted in chief part of a mass of letters which, for
want of space or for other reasons, were not printed in the "Life and
Letters." We would draw particular attention to the correspondence with
Sir Joseph Hooker. To him Mr. Darwin wrote with complete freedom, and
this has given something of a personal charm to the most technical
of his letters. There is also much correspondence, hardly inferior in
biographical interest, with Sir Charles Lyell, Fritz Muller, Mr. Huxley,
and Mr. Wallace. From this unused material we have been able to compile
an almost complete record of Mr. Darwin's work in a series of letters
now published for the first time. We have, however, in a few instances,
repeated paragraphs, or in one or two cases whole letters, from the
"Life and Letters," where such repetition seemed necessary for the sake
of clearness or continuity. Our two volumes contain practically all the matter that it now
seems desirable to publish. But at some future time others may find
interesting data in what remains unprinted; this is certainly true of a
short series of letters dealing with the Cirripedes, which are omitted
solely for want of space. (Preface/1. Those addressed to the late Albany
Hancock have already appeared in the "Transactions of the Tyneside Nat.
Field Club," VIII., page 250.) We are fortunate in being permitted, by Sir Joseph Hooker and by Mr.
Wallace, to publish certain letters from them to Mr. Darwin. We have
also been able to give a few letters from Sir Charles Lyell, Hugh
Falconer, Edward Forbes, Dr. Asa Gray, Professor Hyatt, Fritz Muller,
Mr. Francis Galton, and Sir T. Lauder Brunton. To the two last named,
also to Mrs. Lyell (the biographer of Sir Charles), Mrs. Asa Gray and
Mrs. Hyatt, we desire to express our grateful acknowledgments. The present volumes have been prepared, so as to give as full an idea
as possible of the course of Mr. Darwin's work. The volumes therefore
necessarily contain many letters of a highly technical character, but
none, we hope, which are not essentially interesting. With a view to
saving space, we have confined ourselves to elucidating the letters
by full annotations, and have for the same reason though with some
regret omitted in most cases the beginnings and endings of the letters.
For the main facts of Mr. Darwin's life, we refer our readers to the
abstract of his private Diary, given in the present volume. Mr. Darwin generally wrote his letters when he was tired or hurried, and
this often led to the omission of words. We have usually inserted
the articles, and this without any indication of their absence in the
originals. Where there seemed any possibility of producing an alteration
of meaning (and in many cases where there is no such possibility) we
have placed the introduced words in square brackets. We may say once for
all that throughout the book square brackets indicate words not found
in the originals... Continue reading book >>
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