From William Owen Sr 10 April – 1 May 1834
Summary
Writes a cordial letter with family and local news. Hopes CD will see his two sons in India.
P.S. by Catherine Darwin says no letter was written this month as all is well at home.
Author: | William Mostyn Owen |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 10 Apr – 1 May 1834 |
Classmark: | DAR 204: 129 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-243 |
To John Murray 21 October [1861]
Summary
G. B. Sowerby, Jr has done the drawings for Orchids woodcuts. Calls JM’s attention to the fact that a first-rate cutter must be employed.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | John Murray |
Date: | 21 Oct [1861] |
Classmark: | National Library of Scotland (John Murray Archive) (Ms.42152 ff. 112–113) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3292 |
To Charles Lyell 22 [December 1859]
Summary
Comments on Hooker’s introductory essay [in Flora Tasmaniae].
Cites C. V. Naudin’s article ["Considérations philosophiques sur l’espèce et la variété", Rev. Hortic. 4th ser. 1 (1852): 102–9].
Mentions letter from William Jardine criticising discussion of the Galapagos in the Origin.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Date: | 22 [Dec 1859] |
Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.186) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2593 |
To Richard Owen 13 December [1859]
Summary
Responds to Owen’s remarks that his book [Origin] is not likely to be true because it attempts to explain so much. CD describes how, for fear this might be so, he resolved to give up the work if he could not convince two or three competent judges. He is sensitive because of unjust things said by a distinguished friend [A. Sedgwick]. Value of his views now depends on men eminent in science.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Richard Owen |
Date: | 13 Dec [1859] |
Classmark: | Natural History Museum, Library and Archives (General Special Collections Owen correspondence 9/195) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2580 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … Owen, 10 December [1859] . CD refers to the first edition of Charles Lyell’s Principles of geology ( C. Lyell 1830–3 ), volume 3 of which was published in 1833. The passage given in the letter is in C. Lyell 1830–3 , 3: 144, in which Lyell refers to Clift 1831 . CD’s copy of Lyell 1830–3 is in the Darwin Library–CUL. CD had commented on William …
To J. D. Hooker 3 January [1863]
Summary
Indignant over Owen’s conduct as described in Hugh Falconer’s article on elephants ["On the American fossil elephant of the regions bordering the Gulf of Mexico", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1863): 43–114].
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 3 Jan [1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 115: 178 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3898 |
From George Bentham 21 May 1863
Summary
Returns CD’s pamphlets.
Wishes CD would work out further what keeps certain species immutable for great periods.
Feels himself a convert, but cannot go all lengths with CD.
Feels some reviewers distort CD’s argument.
Author: | George Bentham |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 21 May 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 160: 157 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4172 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 10, letter to Asa Gray, 26[–7] November [1862] , n. 32, and Bentham 1863 , p. xvii. Bentham refers to Hopkins 1860 and [Maw] 1861 ; see letter to George Bentham, 15 April [1863] . T. H. Huxley 1863a and 1863b. See Bentham 1863 , pp. xxv–xxvi. Bentham refers to Richard Owen’s anonymous review of William …
To J. D. Hooker 13 [April 1860]
Summary
Sends a letter concerning priority [of Patrick Matthew] for JDH to read and post.
Angered at Owen’s review.
Huxley’s Royal Institution lecture ends well.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 13 [Apr 1860] |
Classmark: | DAR 115: 48 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2758 |
From John Lubbock 7 April 1863
Summary
JL is off to visit Scotch "kjökken möddings".
Hopes Lyell is not really vexed by his article.
Author: | John Lubbock, 4th baronet and 1st Baron Avebury |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 7 Apr 1863 |
Classmark: | DAR 170: 39 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4077 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … William Benjamin Carpenter had disputed the review of Carpenter 1862 written anonymously by Richard Owen in the Athenæum , 28 March 1863, pp. 417–19 (see Correspondence vol. 11, Appendix VII). See also letter to J. D. Hooker, [17 April 1863] , and letter to John Lubbock, 5 April [1863] and n. 10. …
From Albert Günther 14 May 1872
Author: | Albrecht Carl Ludwig Gotthilf (Albert) Günther |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 14 May 1872 |
Classmark: | DAR 165: 249 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-8329 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 10 May 1872 . Günther refers to Frederick Smith . Richard Owen was superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum , where Günther was applying for promotion to the post of assistant keeper in the zoological department. Osbert Salvin was an ornithologist and entomologist, and did not have a position at the British Museum . John Edward Gray was keeper of the zoological collections at the British Museum . See letter from Albert Günther, 10 May 1872 . Günther refers to his Handbuch der medicinischen Zoologie ( Günther 1858 ). William …
To Elizabeth Drysdale [22 or 29 October 1859]
Summary
Declines an invitation to visit [Moor] Park.
He hopes that Dr Lane is arranging things to his satisfaction.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Elizabeth Pew, Lady Drysdale; Elizabeth Copland, Lady Drysdale; Elizabeth Drysdale, Lady Drysdale |
Date: | [22 or 29] Oct 1859 |
Classmark: | John Wilson (dealer) (Catalogue 88); Clive Farahar & Sophie Dupré (dealers) (Catalogue 55); B & L Rootenberg (dealers) (May 1991) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2498A |
Matches: 1 hit
- … Owen, 10 December [1859] , n. 5). CD initially stayed at Ilkley Wells House, a hydropathic establishment (see Metcalfe 1906 , pp. 107–8, and Correspondence vol. 7, letter to W. D. Fox, [6 October 1859] ). Emma and the children (Henrietta, Elizabeth, and Francis, and probably Leonard and Horace), arrived on 17 October ( Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242); letter from Emma Darwin to William …
To Thomas Henry Huxley 1 January [1860]
Summary
Will keep THH’s secret [of authorship of Times review of Origin]. It has made deep impression.
J. D. Dana’s illness.
Daily News accuses him of plagiarising Vestiges.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Thomas Henry Huxley |
Date: | 1 Jan [1860] |
Classmark: | Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine Archives (Huxley 5: 94) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2633 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … William Lubbock and his son John Lubbock were CD’s neighbours. Richard Owen had expressed his willingness to consider CD’s ‘heterodox’ views on species change in a letter thanking CD for a presentation copy of Origin . He had also given CD further reason to believe he was favourably disposed to the theory when the two met in London early in December 1859. See Correspondence vol. 7, letter from Richard Owen, 12 November 1859 , and letter to Charles Lyell, [10 …
From Hugh Falconer 18 January [1863]
Summary
Jaw with teeth found associated with Archaeopteryx fossil. Waterhouse pronounces it a fish’s jaw.
Author: | Hugh Falconer |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 18 Jan [1863] |
Classmark: | DAR 164: 13 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3926 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … Owen ‘by some overt act’. The allusion may be to William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar , 4.2.121–4: ‘There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats,/For I am armed so strong in honesty/That they pass by me as the idle wind,/Which I respect not’ (Wells and Taylor eds. 1988). In his letter to the Natural History Review , [before 10 …
To J. D. Hooker 25 January [1877]
Summary
CD notes growth of Royal Society may force it to hire officers.
Speculates on cold resistance of bacterial germs.
Will communicate to Royal Society Frank’s paper on the ingestion of solid particles by the protoplasmic protrusions of Dipsacus glands.
CD working on plant dimorphism.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 25 Jan [1877] |
Classmark: | DAR 95: 430–1 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-10814 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … William Dawson & Sons. Hamden, Conn. : Archon Books, Shoe String Press. ‘Illegitimate offspring of dimorphic and trimorphic plants’: On the character and hybrid-like nature of the offspring from the illegitimate unions of dimorphic and trimorphic plants. By Charles Darwin. [Read 20 February 1868. ] Journal of the Linnean Society of London ( Botany ) 10 (1869): 393–437. Owen, …
To Caroline Darwin 10–13 March 1835
Summary
Definite plans now to leave Valparaiso 1 June and to arrive in Sydney in January; then Cape of Good Hope and home in September 1836.
Describes Concepción after earthquake.
Will cross the Cordilleras. Hopes snow will hold off.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Caroline Sarah (Caroline) Darwin; Caroline Sarah (Caroline) Wedgwood |
Date: | 10–13 Mar 1835 |
Classmark: | DAR 223: 26 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-271 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … William Owen has badly hurt his leg. — I wish they had not met this fate. You allude to some of the fossil bones being of value, & this of course is the very best news to me, which I can hear. — See how much obliged I am to all of you for your faithful performance of the promise of monthly letters. — I might have been more than a year without hearing—it is now 10 …
To J. D. Hooker 15 [May 1860]
Summary
Lyell, de facto, first to stress importance of geological changes for geographical distribution.
Asa Gray has given CD too much credit for theories of geographical distribution.
Reaction to hostile criticism
and debt to Lyell, Huxley, JDH, and W. B. Carpenter.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 15 [May 1860] |
Classmark: | DAR 115: 56 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2802 |
To Samuel Butler 1 April [1873]
Summary
Comments on SB’s book [The fair haven (1873)]. CD is struck by SB’s dramatic power – thinks he could write "a really good novel". Surprised at strength of case SB makes that Jesus did not die on the cross. SB’s identity will soon be universally known: Leslie Stephen knows he is the author.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Samuel Butler |
Date: | 1 Apr [1873] |
Classmark: | The British Library (Add MS 34486 D: 60–1) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-8835 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 10 April 1873 (see ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)). CD had been sent a copy of the second edition of The fair haven ( [Butler] 1873 ); his annotated copy is in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 645). The book had been published under the pseudonym John Pickard Owen. CD refers to the posthumously published edited version of Joseph Blanco White’s autobiography ( J. B. White 1845 ). White had been a Roman Catholic priest, then an Anglican priest, and ultimately an advocate of non-denominational Christianity ( ODNB ). Francis Darwin thought CD probably meant William …
To Charles Lyell 18 April [1863]
Summary
Describes a letter he has written to the Athenæum in which he mentions CL’s views on species modification ["Doctrine of heterogeny", Collected papers 2: 78–80].
Comments on criticism of Lyell’s book [Antiquity] by Falconer and others.
Mentions his eczema.
Invites the Lyells to visit.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Date: | 18 Apr [1863] |
Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.294) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4106 |
To John Russell [10 March 1847]
Summary
Memorial presented by members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and other scientific societies, submitting that natural history is inadequately provided for by the present constitution of the Board of Trustees of the British Museum.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | John Russell, 1st Earl Russell |
Date: | [10 Mar 1847] |
Classmark: | House of Commons Parliamentary Papers: 1847 XXXIV.253–6 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1070F |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 10 March 1847. CD’s name appears thirtieth in a list of fifty-seven signatories, in the form ‘C. Darwin, F.R.S. F.G.S. &c. ’ The first four signatories were Roderick Impey Murchison , president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, William Willoughby Cole , president of the Linnean Society , William Buckland , reader in geology and professor of mineralogy at the University of Oxford, and Henry Thomas de la Beche, president of the Geological Society of London . Among the remainder were leading figures from all fields of natural history including Richard Owen , Charles Lyell , William …
letter | (18) |
Darwin, C. R. | (13) |
Bentham, George | (1) |
Falconer, Hugh | (1) |
Günther, Albert | (1) |
Lubbock, John | (1) |
Darwin, C. R. | (5) |
Hooker, J. D. | (4) |
Lyell, Charles | (2) |
Butler, Samuel (b) | (1) |
Copland, Elizabeth | (1) |
Darwin, C. R. | (18) |
Hooker, J. D. | (4) |
Lyell, Charles | (2) |
Bentham, George | (1) |
Butler, Samuel (b) | (1) |