Darwin Collections and Projects at the American Philosophical Society

The American Philosophical Society Library is fortunate enough to hold America’s largest collection of Charles Darwin material, both in print and in manuscript.  The Darwin Papers at the American Philosophical Society represent approximately 15% of the known Darwin Papers.  The Library’s acquisition in 1950 of 177 letters from Darwin to Sir Charles Lyell and 277 more letters to Lyell from other British and European scientists formed the nucleus of the Society’s Darwin collection.

The Darwin Correspondence Project was founded in 1974 by Dr. Frederick Burkhardt with the goal of finding and summarizing all of the known letters to and from Charles Darwin and facilitating access to them.  Dr. Burkhardt was president emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies and former president of Bennington College and a member of the American Philosophical Society.

1.  Photograph of Dr. Frederick Burkhardt, Founder and Editor of Correspondence of Charles Darwin Project.  APS Members Photographs Collection.

2.  Burkhardt, Frederick and Sydney Smith, ed. Correspondence of Charles Darwin.  New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, [1985- ]

The letters were re-catalogued and abstracts of the letters were published in two volumes, with each assigned a number to compensate for the lack of dates on many of the letters.  They were then published in a series of volumes with annotations to help readers understand the context in which the letters were written.  Dr. Burkhardt was co-editor of the series, along with Sydney Smith of Cambridge.

3.  Photograph of Dr. P. Thomas Carroll, Assistant Editor (1974-1976).  Prints and Photographs Collection.

4.  Darwin, Charles, Autograph fragment of a letter to James Paget, n.d.  Charles Darwin Papers.

Throughout the editing process, the editors dated undated letters, identified unidentified correspondents, corrected mistakes in earlier transcriptions of Darwin’s difficult handwriting, and provided background on the content of the letters.  A typed transcription of an 1828 letter from Charles Darwin to J.M. Herbert (13) includes edits by Dr. P. Thomas Carroll, an assistant editor on the project from 1975-1976.  Editors were able to identify even items that initially seemed impossible, such as the fragment “I am greedy for facts.” (4) The writings of James Paget mention Darwin’s use of the phrase, which identified the letter’s probable recipient.

5.  Darwin, Charles to Charles Lyell, 1853 March 24.  Charles Darwin Papers.

Darwin often didn’t date his letters, so the editors had to identify dates by topics discussed, addresses on letterhead and envelopes, and even by the color of the ink used.  Carroll noticed that Darwin had begun using a particular blue ink shortly after his birthday in February 1853 but stopped using it in April, probably when the ink ran out.  This enabled them to date other undated items from 1853.

6.  Darwin, Charles to Charles Lyell, 1862 September 28 and October 3.  Charles Darwin Papers.

Another mystery arose regarding this letter, in which Darwin told Charles Lyell that he regretted using “natural selection” and instead would have used—but here Darwin's phrase had been cut out.  Carroll was horrified at this apparent mutilation.  The world might never know the phrase Darwin preferred because some “clod” had cut out the phrase, he thought.  The next day he read the letter that immediately followed, in which Darwin apologized to Lyell for his poor handwriting: “I am utterly ashamed & groan over my hand-writing. It was ‘Natural Preservation.’  Natural persecution is what the author ought to suffer...”  Lyell had clipped the mysterious phrase and sent it to Darwin for him to decipher.  The phrase was not lost after all.

7.  Blair, Reuben A.  Photograph of goose with inverted wings.  Enclosed in Blair, R.A. to Charles Darwin, 1878 July 17

8.  Darwin, Charles; to R.A. Blair, 1877 December 27; Flower, W.H. to Charles Darwin, 1878 April 12.  Charles Darwin Papers.

Darwin also occasionally corresponded with non-scientists, such as Reuben A. Blair, a haberdasher in Sedalia, Missouri.  Blair was so intrigued by Darwin’s writings that he wrote to Darwin in 1877 about his neighbor’s interesting geese.  Several generations had “inverted” wings.  Having heard that the progenitor of this flock had once been injured in a hailstorm, Blair asked Darwin whether this might represent inheritance of an acquired characteristic—an exception to the theory of natural selection.  Darwin took an immediate interest, asking Blair for more information to forward to his associate, W.H. Flower, but studies indicated no relationship between the putative ancestral injury and the malformation of the wings.

9.  Darwin, Charles, Descent of man fragment (signed), 1868-1870; Portion of a scientific paper (signed), n.d.  Charles Darwin Papers.

In later years, Darwin often signed fragments of his own work as souvenirs for friends and others that he met, perhaps already conscious of the influence that his work had and would have.

10.  Funeral admission card and pall bearer card for Darwin’s funeral (Canon Farrar’s card), 1882 April 26.  Charles Darwin Papers.

11.  Dinner program from 1909 Darwin Celebration.  James Valentine Collection.

12.  Burkhardt, Frederick.  As. Cartas de Charles Darwin, Uma Seleta 1825-1859.  In Portuguese.

The two items above are from the recently acquired collection of James Valentine, distinguished professor of evolutionary biology emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.  The collection includes first editions of all of Darwin’s major works, including many in other languages, and many modern Darwin items.  See Case II for Russian, Spanish, and Chinese works and the chart of Beagle images from a 1960s Darwin educational kit.  Dr. Valentine set out to collect, over 50 years, every edition and variant of every book by Charles Darwin, in all languages.   In combination with existing Darwin printed works already owned by APS, the collection is certain to be the largest collection of Darwin publications in the world.

13.  Darwin, Charles to J.M. Herbert, 1828 October 4 with 1950s transcription edited by P. Thomas Carroll, 1974.  Charles Darwin Papers.