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Darwin’s first love

Summary

Darwin’s long marriage to Emma Wedgwood is well documented, but was there an earlier romance in his life? How was his departure on the Beagle entangled with his first love? The answers are revealed in a series of flirtatious letters that Darwin was…

Matches: 21 hits

  • Had nineteen-year-old Darwin followed this instruction in a letter he received in 1828, there would
  • possesses ’. This personage, a certain Miss Fanny Mostyn Owen, wrote a series of revealing letters
  • from her to the end of his lifeThe Mostyn Owen and Darwin families were
  • creditors) to a ruined abbey in a forest. In Fannys first letter, and in many others she wrote to
  • …   First and last pages of the letter from Fanny Owen, [late January 1828] (DAR
  • Penny Post (1840), envelopes were rarely used. Instead, the letter was folded and held shut with
  • say, “Dear me Maam would you believe it Miss  Fanny Owen corresponds with a young man Maam  at  …
  • awfully dull  and  prosy ’. She closed her letter with instructions toburn this, or if it
  • would they think, of a  Housemaid  writing to M r  Charles Darwin— &#039That summer, while
  • … ) Fannys thanks came in a characteristic letter. Apologies for not writing sooner, were
  • mania  go on, are you as constant  as ever ?’ In this letter, the postilion and housemaid are
  • … ‘ la belle Fanny ’.   Letter from Fanny Owen, 27 January [1830] (DAR
  • intense regret that she was away in Devonshire. ‘ My dear Charles I do hope you will enjoy yourself
  • Darwin that she would remember him. Responding to a recent letter he had written in aBlue
  • ever  be in my opinion of  you  —so do not my dear Charles talk of  forgetting !! the many
  • there was not to be an end of them!! In her last letter before the  Beagle  sailed, she
  • been jilted once, and Biddulph had to prove himself to the Mostyn Owen family, having had a
  • …   The first and last pages of Fanny Owens letter of 1 March 1832 (DAR 204:55), …
  • … ’. Darwins delight in the world created by Fanny Owen in the forest of her own imagination, …
  • Although Fanny seemedhappy & attached to M rB’, Caroline Darwin couldnt help thinking, …
  • and desperately selfish also. ’ Nonetheless, as William Mostyn Owen commented when he wrote to

Darwin in letters, 1880: Sensitivity and worms

Summary

‘My heart & soul care for worms & nothing else in this world,’ Darwin wrote to his old Shrewsbury friend Henry Johnson on 14 November 1880. Darwin became fully devoted to earthworms in the spring of the year, just after finishing the manuscript of…

Matches: 22 hits

  • … bits of family history. On 1 January , a distant cousin, Charles Harrison Tindal, sent a cache of …
  • … my grandfather’s character is of much value to me’ ( letter to C. H. Tindal, 5 January 1880 ). …
  • … have influenced the whole Kingdom, & even the world’ ( letter from J. L. Chester, 3 March 1880 …
  • … delighted to find an ordinary mortal who could laugh’ ( letter from W. E. Darwin to Charles and …
  • … much powder & shot’ ( Correspondence vol. 27, letter from Ernst Krause, 7 June 1879 , and …
  • … modified; but now I much regret that I did not do so’ ( letter to Samuel Butler, 3 January 1880 ). …
  • … and ‘decided on laying the matter before the public’ ( letter from Samuel Butler, 21 January 1880 …
  • … and uncertain about what to do. He drafted two versions of a letter to the Athen æum , sending …
  • … in which he will have the last word’, she warned ( letter from H. E. Litchfield, [1 February 1880] …
  • … who will fight to the end’, added her husband Richard ( letter from R. B. Litchfield, 1 February …
  • … him & given him Darwinophobia? It is a horrid disease’ ( letter from T. H. Huxley, 3 February …
  • … squashing the ‘mosquito inflated to an elephant’ ( letter from Ernst Krause, 9 December 1880 ). …
  • … inches of soil as a protection against enemies.’ ‘Your letter … made me open my eyes’, Gray replied …
  • … his original description. Darwin was puzzled: ‘If my letter opened your eyes, yours has opened mine …
  • … to the same species, should behave so differently.’ ( Letter to Asa Gray, 17 February 1880 .) But …
  • … of the plant in its native habitat. He forwarded a letter from a botanist and schoolteacher in …
  • … ‘Where is the profit for Author or publisher?’ ( letter from R. F. Cooke, 20 July 1880 ). ‘I must …
  • … Sarah Haliburton. She was one of the daughters of William Mostyn Owen, the squire of Woodhouse, …
  • … aided in any way direct attacks on religion’ ( letter to E. B. Aveling, 13 October 1880 ). Finally …
  • … the Crown. Darwin asked Arabella Buckley, who had served as Charles Lyell’s secretary, to draft a …
  • … he would think me mad or impertinent’ ( letter to A. B. Buckley, 31 October [1880] ). Buckley …
  • … Hill Place in Surrey, which became a regular destination for Charles and Emma, and also a site of …