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Darwin Correspondence Project

From W. S. Dallas   7 May 1879

21 Alma Squre | N. W.

7 May 1879

My dear Sir

I have received from Dr. Krauss the first half of the MS. of his enlarged notice of Erasmus Darwin, & will set to work upon it once, but I fear that my progress will be comparatively slow, seeing that the MS., although not in German Cursivschrift, is in a very small Germanic-English handwriting.—1 The remainder he will send in two or three weeks,— but he says that you wish to have the first part as soon as possible as you propose to make some additions to it.— I will accordingly send you the MS. translation in portions as I can get it done, i.e. the work of two or three days at a time, & if I do not find the small cramped handwriting a very great obstacle, I hope to get all this part finished in a week, or ten days at most— Please send a line to say whether this arrangement will suit you— So far as I can judge from a cursory inspection of part of the MS. I don’t think the translation will present any particular difficulties,— where idiomatic phrases & twists occur I will do my best to keep near to the original.—

Believe me | Yours very truly | W. S. Dallas.

Charles Darwin Esq.

Footnotes

CD had asked Krause to send his manuscript on Erasmus Darwin directly to Dallas to be translated into English (see letter to Ernst Krause, 2 May 1879). Cursivschrift: italics (German); Dallas probably intended Kurrentschrift, a form of cursive writing that is the written counterpart of black-letter typefaces such as Fraktur. The manuscript was based on Krause 1879a, published earlier in 1879, and the translation formed part of Erasmus Darwin.

Bibliography

Erasmus Darwin. By Ernst Krause. Translated from the German by W. S. Dallas, with a preliminary notice by Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1879.

Krause, Ernst. 1879a. Erasmus Darwin, der Großvater und Vorkämpfer Charles Darwin’s: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Descendenz-Theorie. Kosmos 4 (1878–9): 397–424.

Summary

Has received the enlarged MS for Erasmus Darwin from E. Krause.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12037
From
William Sweetland Dallas
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
London, Alma Square, 21
Source of text
DAR 99: 102–3
Physical description
ALS 3pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12037,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12037.xml

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