Much of the text for this finding aid has been taken from the printed volume, Calendar of Darwin Letters in the American Philosophical Society by P. Thomas Carroll.

The Darwin Papers at the American Philosophical Society represent approximately 15% of the surviving correspondence of the British evolutionary theorist, Charles Darwin. Consisting chiefly of correspondence between Darwin and other scientists writing on subjects from natural selection and the theory of evolution to the controversy caused by On the Origin of Species, the Darwin Papers.

The earliest accession of Darwin Papers at the APS consisted of an extensive and important series of letters between Darwin and his colleague and mentor, Charles Lyell, that frame the development of their thought from the late 1830s into the 1870s. There is a wealth of other important correspondence in the collection with John Thomas Gulick, George John Romanes, and Philip Lutley Sclater, among others.

This collection includes photostats of letters from Walsh to Darwin, in the Chicago Museum of Natural History, and photostats of Darwin manuscripts in possession of Dr. Robert M. Stecher, Cleveland, Ohio.

Relevance of the Darwin Calendar

Thousands of pages have been written about Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), whose Origin of Species laid the foundation for modern evolutionary theory. Even so, our picture of Darwin and our assessment of his place in history are undergoing constant revision. Relatively speaking, we are, after all, only recently accustomed to the notion that we share a common ancestry with apes, and few outside the biological professions yet appreciate the sweeping implications of population thinking (as opposed to typological thinking) or the concept of ecology. The social and political significance of Darwin's work will probably be debated for some time to come. Many historians of science are interested in the processes by which Darwin's ideas were formulated, disseminated, and ultimately accepted by scientists and by laymen. Scientists continue to be enlightened by reading Darwin ¹ and publication of transcriptions of Darwin's various manuscripts occurs regularly. ²

Given these developments, as well as the added stimulus provided by the 1959 centennial of the publication of the Origin, it seems certain that research and writing upon Darwin will continue, with scholars demanding access to ever more records of Darwin's life and work. This calendar was prepared with this demand in mind, so that readers may better interpret the significance of this great naturalist's achievements and those of his colleagues.

The five remaining sections of this introduction explain in a general way the design and the intended utility of the calendar. They discuss the following topics: 1)the primary importance of letters in the assessment of Darwin's life and work; 2) the justification for publishing these letters; 3) the nature of the Darwin letters collection at the Library of the American Philosophical Society; 4) the reasons for publishing the letters in the more-or-less unfashionable calendar format; and 5) the unique problems encountered in dating the letters. A rather extensive and detailed statement of the editorial method employed in this calendar follows the introduction.

Darwin's Letters

Modern man, armed with the telephone and often inundated with bureaucratic paperwork, might find it hard to comprehend how important letters were to life among the literate elite of the nineteenth century, and how valuable these nineteenth-century letters now are to scholars. But Darwin's contemporaries knew well the value of letters; Thomas Jefferson put the point succinctly in 1823 when he argued that "the letters of a person, especially of one whose business has been chiefly transacted by letters, form the only full and genuine journal of his life." ³ This was especially true of scientists and other scholars of the day, for whom communication of the written word was such an integral part of intellectual activity.

Letters are particularly significant in Darwin's case. Physically isolated at Down House for most of his life and often immobilized by chronic illness, Darwin depended more heavily than others upon letters as his principal mode of communication. Moreover, because correspondence was Darwin's usual medium of contact with his closest friends, his letters often exhibit a degree of candor about his life and work not revealed clearly in any of his other papers and publications -- not even in the intimate Autobiography which, though written for his own satisfaction and the entertainment of his children, lacked the presence of daily communication and was tempered somewhat by the restraints of Darwin's time and class. ⁴

Finally, the unusually heterogeneous quality of the Darwin letters reveal better than any other of the records of his life the diversity of his daily routine and the catholicity of his interests and preoccupations.

Scholars who examine the record of Darwin's life contained in his letters can expect to find many types of information. For the historian of science with a bent toward the history of ideas, there is abundant material on Darwin's scientific views. Sometimes a passage in a letter clarifies or corrects a claim in one of Darwin's published works; for example, in a letter to Charles Lyell in 1860, Darwin is tempering a rather extreme contention, which he had written into the Origin, when he writes that "Ammonites have become wholly extinct in a remarkably sudden manner relatively to most other families [and not absolutely, as implied in the Origin]; I meant only this [in the Origin], but I see I have not been nearly guarded enough." ⁵ At other times Darwin retracts assertions made in previous letters; in some cases only the earlier, unamended claim has been published, so that the unsuspecting scholar may be misled if he does not peruse carefully the unpublished materials. ⁶

Occasionally, a Darwin letter will contain opinions and theories not yet expressed in print, or at least not yet expressed as well as in the particular unpublished letter at hand; writing to Lyell in 1860, for example, Darwin argued that "how far to lump & split species is indeed a hopeless problem. It must in the end, I think, be determined by mere convenience." ⁷ It would be hard to locate a more succinct or more modern expression of Darwin's well-known disbelief in the existence of identifiable species.

Scholars interested in the social history of science, the growth of scientific ideas, the sociology of science, and the dynamics of scientific communities also will find much of interest in the letters, for they contain many of Darwin's views on these subjects, especially in reference to Darwin's assessment of the prospects for ultimate acceptance of his own theories. This is best exemplified in Darwin's confidences to friends in 1859 and 1860 regarding the fate of the Origin, ⁸ but there are other examples concerning Darwin's views about priority and his estimation of the role his cirripede work would play in the growth of science. ⁹

Still another revealing type of information expressed only in the letters is that relating to Darwin's assessments of his colleagues -- enlightening glimpses of Darwin's critical insight at work which rarely surfaced in the polite society of contemporary England but are now absolutely necessary for a full understanding of his professional identity and behavior. Where else can one find Darwin saying of Robert FitzRoy: "I never cease wondering at his character,... full of good... traits but spoiled by such an unlucky temper. Some part of... his brain wants mending....?" ¹⁰. It is no wonder that this passage, as well as one which describes Richard Owen as "wonderfully clever in his malevolence," ¹¹ usually were deleted silently from the earlier published versions of Darwin's letters -- this is all the more reason for including them here.

To complement such insights and revelations, there is much autobiographical matter in the letters. It might be used to construct a reasonably good record both of Darwin's face-to-face encounters with his colleagues and of the content of such meetings. ¹² Often the letters record Darwin's whereabouts, which information is especially useful in determining the dates of Darwin's frequent one-day trips into London -- something not systematically recorded elsewhere. ¹³ Moreover, the letters constantly remind us that Darwin was as much a family man and a medical patient as he was a naturalist and a scientist, and they show how these different aspects of Darwin's life tended to interact. For example, in 1860, Darwin's daughter contracted remittent fever, and the family was forced by their concern for the young girl's life to remove to a healthier climate than that found at Down. While thus away, Darwin found himself unable to continue the research he had been conducting at home, so he filled his idle time by examining the sun-dew, an insectivorous plant common to the area being visited. This work eventually led to the publication of an entire book on insectivorous plants, and one could therefore argue the extreme externalist position that illness had been the cause for its appearance. ¹⁴

Still another type of correspondence consists of purely business letters, which range from orders and acknowledgments of books and reprints -- data valuable to scholars -- to routine details such as the addition of a wing to Down House in 1876-1877 or the purchase of medical supplies. ¹⁵ Such routine letters show, if nothing else, Darwin's meticulousness, and they are sometimes useful for dating other Darwin letters of greater import.

Need to Publish Letters

To a certain extent, scholars have been reaping benefits from Darwin's letters for long time, since the bulk of Darwin's most important letters have been in print for well over fifty years, and additional letters have been published from time to time ever since. ¹⁶ One might well ask, then, why a calendar of 700 more letters is necessary, especially since portions, at least, of roughly half of the letters in the American Philosophical Society's collection have already been printed. Several different responses can be given to this question.

Most importantly, there is the problem of selection criteria in the major published collections of Darwin's correspondence. The three works which contain published versions of many of the items calendared below (as well as a great many other Darwin letters) provide only a selection of Darwin's correspondence, and those letters which are included are usually not transcribed in full. In all three of these works, the choice of both which letters are to be included and which portions of the chosen letters are to be printed has been colored by the motives of the editors. As these motives are not those of historians today, there are limitations -- some of them severe -- to the usefulness of these works as definitive references for modern scholars. To illustrate the point: "In choosing letters for publication," says Darwin's son Francis in the opening line of the preface of his edition of his father's Life and Letters, "I have been largely guided by the wish to illustrate my father's personal character." In some cases, such guidance led him to give a relatively low priority to the illustration of Darwin's scientific work, and in most cases, it meant deleting family matters as well as derogatory remarks and other embarrassing details. ¹⁷ More Letters, edited by Francis Darwin and A. C. Seward, somewhat redresses the balance; its editors say that they prepared the volumes "to give as full an idea as possible of the course of Mr. Darwin's work," and they state further that their compendium contains "practically all the matter that it now seems desirable to publish. But," they continue, "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." ¹⁸ Similarly, in the preface to her two-volume biography of her mother, which contains 66 of her father's letters, Darwin's daughter, H. E. Litchfield, confesses that she began to prepare a record of her mother's life because she thought it would be "of value to her [Emma Darwin's] grandchildren," and then she altered and enlarged the scope of the book as she became interested in "the personalities of the writers" of the letters printed therein. ¹⁹ While such criteria of inclusion and exclusion were perfectly respectable and common in their day, and scholars have profited greatly from all these works despite their limitations, there is still a need to treat Darwin's letters more systematically, particularly with the needs of historians of science and other scholars in mind.

A still more serious indictment of the principal sources of Darwin's correspondence is that those letters which do appear in them were not edited according to rigorous modern standards. "In printing the letters," Francis Darwin confesses about the Life and Letters, "I have followed (except in a few cases) the usual plan of indicating the existence of omissions or insertions." One wonders what the "few cases" were, and exactly how few they were. "I have not followed the originals," he continues, "as regards the spelling of names, the use of capital letters, or in the manner of punctuation." ²⁰ Similarly, in More Letters, "dots indicate omissions, but many omissions are made without being so indicated." ²¹ In Emma Darwin, "many omissions are made without putting any sign that this has been done. Neither the punctuation nor the spelling has been rigidly followed. But the sense has never wittingly been altered, although occasionally a word evidently omitted has been added without putting any sign that this has been done." ²²

In addition to the problems relating to the imprecise editorial standards of these works and to standards of letter selection which stress Darwin's character to the neglect of his career and other aspects of his life, some scholars may have difficulty in using these works because: the letters are not placed in chronological order; in far too many cases are incorrectly dated or are not dated at all ²³; and the indexes are inadequate.

To a certain extent, these final criticisms can also be levelled at some of the small selections of Darwin letters published as journal articles with increasing frequency since the centennial of the publication of the Origin in 1859. ²⁴ Moreover, the quality of the transcriptions in some of these articles is not very good. ²⁵ While this calendar will not rectify all of these problems (most notably because it contains a rather small and arbitrary selection of those letters published in these articles), it should clarify all such problems for the letters with which it deals. Moreover, use of this calendar should at least streamline the kind of research which can be conducted only while one is visiting the Society's archives. This should save much research time. ²⁶

Nature of the Society's Darwin Collections

To a first approximation, Darwin's correspondents can be grouped according to their relationship to Darwin and their function as contributors to his work. A look at a few of these various types of correspondent may help readers to obtain an overview of the Darwin collections calendared here.

Among the correspondents, there are at least six types. 1. Members of the Darwin family. Letters to and from these persons are sometimes the most intimate of all of Darwin's letters, but they are not so numerous as letters to and from some correspondents in the other groups discussed below. This is probably because of Darwin's proximity to his family -- except, of course, during his early life, particularly during the voyage of the Beagle, when letters home to his sister are some of the most revealing letters Darwin ever wrote. 2. Confidants, friends, and close colleagues. These persons were the figures most closely associated with Darwin's everyday work, and the letters to them are the most useful for historians. In some cases, because of Darwin's removal from London and need to keep in close touch with his most trusted colleagues, the collected letters to these figures form an almost daily record of Darwin's life and work. 3. Other colleagues. These were scientists, naturalists, and the like with whom Darwin had only professional relations. Although somewhat less cordial than letters to confidants, correspondence with other colleagues is similar in substance to that with confidants. 4. Informants. These were rather special colleagues who supplied the sedentary Darwin with the observations and other data needed to test various aspects of his scientific theories. Darwin was careful in his selection of informants; he always checked to be certain that each one was an expert in the subject about which he was inquiring. Darwin had such informants in all corners of the world, but he also called upon nearby friends, relatives, former schoolmates, and acquaintances for information on topics about which such persons had some knowledge. 5. Business associates. This category includes booksellers, publishers, chemical suppliers, solicitors, architects, and the like. Correspondence with them is sometimes useful as a record of Darwin's activities, especially as an indicator of Darwin's reading, and it usually shows Darwin's attention to detail. 6. Unsolicited correspondents. From such persons Darwin received many letters, notes, and specimens. These ranged from crank mail to information on scientific curiosities about which Darwin showed great interest.

All six of these groups are represented to a greater or lesser degree in the American Philosophical Society's collections, and since some of the finest examples are not easily identified by perusal of the calendar, given its chronological format, they are discussed below. Unfortunately, they give a necessarily one-sided view of the relationship between Darwin and his correspondents, because there are only eleven letters to Darwin in the Society's collections. ²⁷

At the core of the Library's holdings are the letters to Charles Lyell, the father of uniformitarian geology and Darwin's "Lord Chancellor" for science. ²⁸ Until his death in 1875, Lyell was one of Darwin's closest confidants. Many of Darwin's letters to him have been published, although most of the passages concerning geology, as well as a few other crucial sentences here and there, have been excised from the printed versions. Some of the unpublished letters are also of importance.

The calendar lists an unusually rich correspondence with two other confidants: George John Romanes, the physiologist, and John Maurice Herbert, one of Darwin's schoolmates at Cambridge. Begun in 1874, the Darwin-Romanes correspondence warmed over time, as Darwin came to trust and admire this young colleague. In a sense, Romanes filled a gap for Darwin which was created with the death of Lyell in 1875, although in the Darwin-Romanes relationship the roles of elder and follower were reversed for Darwin from what they had been with Lyell. The letters to Romanes are replete with details about Darwin's pangenesis hypothesis and the experiments designed by the two men to test it, as well as much material on animal intelligence, spiritualism, and other topics. The letters to Herbert begin as early as 1828 and provide important insight into Darwin's early life, including his voyage on the Beagle. While some of these letters have been published, a few significant portions of them have not, and readers with a particular interest in the views of the young Darwin will probably want to study the Herbert entries in the calendar with extra care. ²⁹

Informants are almost as well represented in the calendar as are confidants. The Library has a particularly good collection of letters to George Henry Kendrick Thwaites, the Ceylonese naturalist, concerning the flora and fauna of Ceylon and India as well as the expression of the emotions of savages in these regions. The collection illustrates well both the questions Darwin asked and the answers he expected to receive. The correspondence with Thomas Campbell Eyton, another of Darwin's schoolmates at Cambridge, is of similar interest, especially on topics relating to osteology and other morphological similarities, dispersal mechanisms, and domestic varieties. Both the Thwaites and the Eyton letters are indicative of the methods of gathering data used extensively by Darwin during and after the Origin period (ca. 1854-1875); the earlier part of these years, of course, represent Darwin's most important fact-gathering episode since his return from the Beagle voyage.

The collections of letters to the correspondents named above by no means comprise all of the Library's Darwin holdings, of course. There are a great many other letters, sometimes in groups to a single correspondent (e.g. to Philip Lutley Sclater or to John Phillips) and sometimes scattered through miscellaneous correspondence. Only careful reading of all the letters in a given period will give scholars a genuine feel for the totality of Darwin's life and work.

Choosing the Calendar Format

In choosing the calendar format for this guide, the primary objective has been to bring scholar and documents as close together as possible, given the restraints of economy, of time, and of the unique character of the originals. Almost thirty years ago, the usefulness of a calendar for achieving this objective in situations such as exist with the Darwin letters at the Society was summed up well by archivist and local historian Morris L. Radoff of the Maryland Hall of Records:

This calendar is somewhat more extensive than most. A description of this more extensive type of reference work and a justification for its employment in this instance are summed up well in the Harvard Guide to American History:

Resolving the Dating Problem

Anyone who has worked with Darwin's letters knows how difficult it often is to assign a correct and exact date to each of his letters. Francis Darwin and A. C. Seward stated the problem well when they wrote that "Mr. Darwin, who was careful in other things, generally omitted the date in familiar correspondence, and it is often only by treating a letter as a detective studies a crime that we can make sure of its date." ³² For a compiler of a calender of Darwin's letters, of course, the inconsistent dating creates the same problems and puzzles that Francis Darwin faced, and, like him, one has to employ a variety of methods of dating that would do honor to Sherlock Holmes. The usual techniques involving watermarks, postmarks, content analysis, and handwriting analysis were sufficient in most cases, but even after such methods had been employed the dates on a number of letters remained ambiguous.

Fortunately, study of the variant addresses appearing in the headings of almost all Darwin letters written since 1842 has allowed the dating of most of the letters in the calendar, at least to within a few years. ³³ The research on this subject, conducted in collaboration with Thaddeus J. Trenn, University of Regensburg, indicates that Darwin used at least nine variant letterhead addresses for his home in Down as tabulated in the table below and illustrated in Figure 2.

Address variants

(The end points for these dates were determined by recording the addresses and the dates for all unambiguously-dated Darwin letters which could be found, both here and at Cambridge University Library -- probably about 1,000 letters in all. A plausible explanation apparently can be advanced for every change of address, and in most cases, the switch from one address type to another is sudden. For the purposes of dating the letters in this calendar, however, the greatest possible latitude in the beginning and final dates of use of each variant has been assumed; this has produced the overlaps in the time periods given above. The research on the variant addresses continues, and the final results will probably be published elsewhere.)

One final note about dates is necessary. Often the date assigned to a particular letter in this calendar will differ by a few days from the date given in a published version of the same letter, especially those published versions appearing in Life and Letters or More Letters. This is because the editors of these works often used the date of receipt of a letter, taken from the endorsement, rather than the actual date on which the letter was written. ³⁴ In cases in which Darwin gave some reference to the day of the week on which the letter was written, it has been possible to determine the date of writing by reference to a perpetual calendar. In such cases, the correction of the date has been made silently.

Purists might not find this calender to their liking. It deviates from traditional practices ³⁵ in a number of details, from the distinctive overall format of each of its entries to an unusually liberal use of brackets and inverted commas. These innovations have been dictated by the uncommonly uniform nature of the items analyzed (almost all of them letters written by Darwin), by the peculiar characteristics of Darwin's letters, and by the unique needs of Darwin scholars. In the case of each uncommon procedure, a conscious determination was made that the benefits to be derived by departure from standard practice outweigh the perils and bother incumbent upon readers who must first school themselves in so many unorthodoxies.

Rules followed and usages observed are explained below, in five sections: format of entries -- an extended guide to most of the practices followed; editorial conventions (i.e. treatment of orthography, punctuation, obsolete grammar, and the like in quoted passages); textual devices; descriptive abbreviations of items (e.g. ALS); and printing conventions. The first section, on format, explains what material is discussed in the four sections that follow it. Illustrations of sample manuscript letters are provided (Figs. 3 and 4), so that users may see for themselves how various situations were treated editorially.

The calendar consists of a series of entries numbered consecutively in the left-hand margin. Except where noted, each entry represents one letter or other manuscript item, plus all accompanying enclosures, sketches, and the like. Unless indicated otherwise, all enclosures are in Darwin's hand, unsigned, and on approximately the same size and type of paper as the letters with which they are enclosed. Each entry consists of four parts: date; description of item(s); abstract, including publication information, if any; and annotations, if any. Each section is separated from the others by a blank line; otherwise, the entries are single space.

Arrangement of the parts of the entry in this way was decided upon to facilitate special treatment of certain unique aspects of the Darwin materials. Although the date of an entry is usually placed in the margin in other calendars, it has been given its own line in this calendar so that endorsements, postmarks, and watermarks could be included in full; scholars long accustomed to undated or ambiguously-dated Darwin letters will find this feature useful for checking the dates assigned to undated or incompletely dated letters. The part consisting of the date always contains the year, month, day, and (if provided by Darwin) the day of the week, in that order, on which the letter was written, followed by endorsements, postmarks, watermarks, and other information pertaining to date; such additional dating aids are always given as nearly exactly as possible to how they were on the original, and they are preceded by abbreviations identifying each (e.g. "wmk." precedes the watermark). Editorial conventions and textual devices used with the date are discussed below in two special sections on such matters.

The description, comprising the second part of each entry, is in two sections. The first section gives, as a first element, the full name of the other principal for the item besides Darwin, and it indicates whether this person is the author or the recipient of the item. This first element would thus read "To Charles LYELL" for a letter from Darwin to Lyell. Note that the last name of the principal is given entirely in upper case letters to facilitate scanning of the entries. (This is only done for individuals.) The second element of the first section of the description provides Darwin's address at the time of writing, as indicated by Darwin himself at the head of each letter. If the address is one of the variants of Darwin's Down address, it will be given as "Down", followed by an indication of the number of the variant type that appears (see p. xxiii, above). Thus, if Darwin wrote "Down Bromley Kent" on a given letter, for example, this will be indicated by "Down (type 2)". If Darwin's whereabouts are not indicated, this will be signified by "no location". If the stationery used has a black mourning border, or if an ink of a distinctive color was used by the author in the writing of the letter, this will be noted in parentheses following the indication of Darwin's location. The two elements of the first section are separated from each other by a semicolon.

The second section of the description begins a new line below the first section. It consists of three parts: the descriptive abbreviation for the item (e.g. ALS); the dimensions of the item, in inches, with vertical dimension given first ³⁶; and the number of pages of text, rounded up to the nearest whole number of pages. Descriptive abbreviations used are discussed in a separate section below. If there is an envelope, enclosure, or sketch, or if there is an address for, or an endorsement by, the recipient, this will be indicated following the number of pages. If the text of the letter indicates that there should be an enclosure, but there is none, this will be indicated by the phrase "(enclosure wanting)" following the number of pages. If the address for or the endorsement by the recipient occupies a separate page from the pages of text, indication of such address or endorsement will be separated from indication of the number of pages by "and". If such address and/or endorsement is written on the same page as a page of text, indication of such address or endorsement will be separated from indication of the number of pages by a comma. Thus, if a four-page letter, for example, has an endorsement on the top of the first page, above the text, it will be indicated "4p., end."; if the endorsement is on a separate, fifth page, it will be indicated "4p. and end." In other words, readers should always assume that the use of a comma in this instance means that the additional portion of the item is substantively, but not physically, distinct from what precedes the comma; use of the word "and" instead of a comma means that the additional portion is both substantively and physically distinct.

When there is either an address for Darwin's correspondent or an endorsement, it is reproduced fully in brackets following the indication of its existence. As there is such a large number of misspellings in these addresses and endorsements, "sic" was not employed to indicate them. Readers may assume a misspelling to have been made by Darwin or his correspondent. No attempt was made to identify with certainty the handwriting of endorsements, although those endorsements provided in the calendar are usually in the hands of Darwin's correspondents. As in the case of the date for each item, editorial conventions and textual devices used in the descriptive part of each entry are discussed below in the special sections on such matters.

The third part of each entry contains the abstract -- the real meat of the item. Radoff claims that "the question of how full the abstract should be has long been the bC*te noire of calendarers," ³⁷ and no statement about calendaring could be truer. After much consideration, reasonably full abstracts were deemed desirable, but a price -- namely the deletion of all textual matter which is published faithfully elsewhere and the rendering of the remaining textual matter in a complex way which is not exceptionally easy to read -- had to be paid for this comprehensiveness, so that the length of the calendar would not be prohibitive. Accordingly, if it is known that the item or any part of it has been published, a simple reference to the location of the printed text will be made in lieu of an abstract of this portion of text. As the completeness and the accuracy of such printed texts varies considerably, however, a series of standardized phrases are employed in the references to the locations of the printed texts, and substantive corrections are supplied. These standardized phrases -- arbitrarily designated as "printing conventions" -- are designed to convey a rough idea of the accuracy and the completeness of the printed texts; they are discussed below in a special section. The substantive corrections -- including abstracts of substantive deleted portions -- follow reference to the location of the printed text. Corrections are keyed into the printed text by reference to the page and line of printed text being corrected. If necessary to avoid ambiguity, the exact location within the given line also is provided. When there is other material on the same printed page as a letter which is being corrected, and a correction is indicated for, say, line 15, the reader should begin counting lines only where the text of the incorrect letter begins: in other words, in this case "line 15" means "line 15 of the letter being corrected," not "line 15 from the top of the page."

If no published version of any part of the item is known, an abstract of the entire text is provided. The abstracts treat every topic in the original texts; topics are usually (but not always) presented in the order in which Darwin presented them. Each abstract consists of a series of statements (not necessarily whole sentences) connected by semicolons. When a clause begins with a singular indicative verb (e.g. "asks") and no subject of the verb is given, Darwin is implied as the subject. When the verb is not singular and indicative (e.g. "ask"), it should be read as a command to the recipient. Substantial quotation is employed. Superscript arabic numerals in this and the preceding parts of each entry indicate substantial editorial additions and refer to the correspondingly numbered notes in the fourth part of the entry. Other editorial conventions and textual devices employed in this part of each entry are discussed below in special sections.

The fourth and final part of each entry consists of annotations to the preceding three parts. An effort was made to identify every reference to persons, places, things, publications, and events; if any of these is not identified clearly in an entry, the reader can assume that research upon it proved unsuccessful. Annotations contain the minimum of explanation or interpretation, for this is not the responsibility of an editor; primary objectives of the calendar annotations were identification and description.

Biographical information is not provided in the annotations to each entry, as this would have necessitated a great many biographical notes for each person, one for each entry in which he or she is mentioned. Instead, biographical information is provided in the biographical notes following the calendar.

Numbering of the annotations begins afresh for each entry. Sometimes one note (usually the first one) relates to more than one location in the entry, usually because a single annotation can explain how both the date and the recipient of the item were determined in the absence of explicit information in the original. To save space, and to avoid an excessive number of annotations, certain information such as Christian names and titles of books are provided in the abstract rather than in the notes wherever this information can be worked into the abstract reasonably smoothly. Use of the word "perhaps" in a note indicates that the material in the note is conjectural.

To some degree, the letters annotate each other, since there is often a run of letters on the same subject. Cross-references between two or more letters in which the same subject is discussed are kept to a minimum. Generally, those letters which are obviously part of a series of exchanges between Darwin and a given correspondent on some particular and very definite topic are referred only to the next earlier letter on the same topic. This allows readers to trace an exchange on a given topic backwards through time, once the last letter of the series is found.

Should readers wish at this time to see an example of the layout of the four parts of each entry, a good letter for study is that to Lyell dated August 25, [1845]; its entry is on page 18 below, and the first page of the manuscript letter is reproduced as Figure 3. This letter not only provides an example of the four parts of each entry but also allows readers to compare a typical calendar abstract against the original manuscript, thereby getting some notion of the thoroughness and reliability of the abstracts.

Additional discussions of minutiae of editorial policy appear at the head of the list of acronyms, abbreviations, and short titles given below, as well as at the head of the biographical notes following the calendar. Finally, in those few locations where editorial additions might easily be interpreted as part of the original item, the initials of the editor ("PTC") have been added to identify the material as editorially added.

A calendar, unlike a letterpress edition, provides comprehensive faithfulness to the original manuscript only in certain portions of each entry. This imposes upon the calendarer the additional preliminary editorial chore of indicating precisely which parts of each entry are direct quotations from the original and which are not. In this calendar, an attempt has been made to preserve in each entry as much as possible of the original manuscript.

Subject to the editorial conventions to be outlined below, the following portions of each entry are to be considered as exact transcriptions from the original Darwin letter: the date (i.e. the first part of the entry), including watermarks, postmarks, and endorsements; the name of Darwin's correspondent (i.e. the first element of the first section of the description); Darwin's address (i.e. the second element of the first section of the description), except where the address was a variant Down address, in which case the shorthand form described earlier is used; the endorsement and the address of Darwin's correspondent, if these are provided in the original; those portions of the abstract which are enclosed in inverted commas (hereafter referred to as "quoted portions"); and the factual data (dates, names, titles of books, etc.) in those portions of the abstract not enclosed in inverted commas (i.e. "unquoted portions"). Only the earliest decipherable postmark is provided, and only that portion of a watermark indicating the date is given.

In each of these exactly-transcribed locations -- with the exception of addresses, endorsements, postmarks, and watermarks, which are discussed below -- the following rules apply: if the word, phrase, or clause is doubtful, the passage in doubt is enclosed in brackets and followed by a question mark ("?"). When more than one reading is plausible, the several readings are all enclosed in a single set of brackets, and each reading is followed by its own question mark (e.g. "[these? those?]"). Editorial additions are enclosed in brackets without a question mark. If the editorial addition is conjectural, it will be enclosed in brackets and preceded by a question mark. Deletions from the text are denoted by ellipsis points ("..."). Passages in parentheses are parenthetical matter from the original. See the section of textual devices below for a graphic representation of these rules.

Exception to these rules must be made in the case of addresses, endorsements, postmarks, and watermarks because, although they are faithful transcriptions of the original manuscript, these elements are always enclosed within brackets, as a matter of course, in order to set them off from contiguous matter of a different nature. To be specific, watermarks and postmarks are given with the date provided by Darwin; they are enclosed in brackets to prevent their being confused with the date which Darwin himself wrote. Similarly, addresses and endorsements are inserted as part of the description of the item; they are bracketed to set them off from this descriptive matter, the latter having been added editorially. In these special cases, matter in parentheses consists of either portions which are added by the calendarer, are dubious readings, or are found in parentheses in the original; which of these alternatives applies in each case is either clear from the context or is explained by a note. ³⁸ Also, in these places where the bracket rules are exceptional, deletions are still denoted by ellipsis points and question marks preceding and following passages have the same meaning as in other locations. In the address for and the endorsement by Darwin's correspondent, as well as in the postmark, transition from one line of manuscript to the next is indicated by the slash ("/"); these transitions are not noted in any other portion of each entry.

In all locations, titles of office, such as "Mr.", "Mrs.", "Capt.", or Sir", are omitted except in cases in which Darwin gave such titles in the original and the title is or may be important in identifying the person to whom it refers. Also, occasionally a title of office (esp. titles of rank or royalty such as "Captain", "Colonel", or "Lady") will be retained to set endpoints for an otherwise undated letter by reference to the years during which the person had the title. (This only works, of course, if the person in question was elevated to a higher rank at a later time; otherwise, one might keep the same title for life.)

Names of persons are given fully enough in each location in which they appear so that a positive identification can be made. Those parts of the full name not provided by Darwin are, of course, enclosed in brackets. Sometimes, when necessary to distinguish between two persons with the same name (e.g. father and son), a title of honor or other distinguishing appellation will be annexed in brackets to the name, even if the title had not been conferred at the time the letter was written. An example of such an anachronistic usage is the addition of "Baron Avebury" to the name of John William Lubbock the younger (1834-1913) whenever it appears in letters written before he became a baron. Another anachronistic practice is the inclusion of a woman's married name before the date of her marriage (e.g. "Henrietta Emma Darwin Litchfield" before her marriage to Litchfield). In the case of multiple appearances of the same person's name in a single letter, the full name will be given only at the first encounter; succeeding references will be to surname only.

In the quoted portions of the abstract, Darwin's marginal notes, postscripts, stray marks, and marginal additions are inserted into the text of the letter without comment if the proper and precise location for them in the text has been indicated by Darwin and is readily identifiable. Otherwise, editorial comments describe roughly where such passages appear in the manuscript. In contrast, extraneous marks made by unknown third parties or by autograph dealers, or numbers and names written by Francis Darwin as part of his compilation scheme for Life and Letters (e.g. the "Denny 5" at the top of Fig. 2a) are not recorded. ³⁹ In some cases, deciding whether a stray mark was an endorsement or an extraneous mark of some later handler was very difficult, and a subjective decision had to be made; at all times, an effort was made to be as systematic as possible.

Darwin's cancellations (i.e. strike-outs) generally are omitted silently from the quoted portions, since they are usually trivial. In those few cases where a cancellation is retained, it is enclosed in brackets with an editorial comment indicating that it is a cancellation. Passages inserted between lines by Darwin are inserted silently into the text whenever Darwin indicated that they should be inserted.

The original punctuation, grammar, capitalization, and orthography are retained in all passages which are transcribed exactly from the original, with the following exceptions. Superfluous dashes at the close of sentences are usually deleted silently, although a few are kept to retain the Victorian flavor. Colons at the ends of abbreviations are changed to periods. Raised or superscript letters, such as were often found at the ends of abbreviations in nineteenth century correspondence, are silently lowered. Ligatures are silently expanded to two letters, and the elongated "s" is modernized silently. The ampersand ("&") and forms based upon it, such as "&c." for "et cetera", are retained. Other abbreviations in the original are usually expanded, with the added portions enclosed in brackets; in such cases of expansion, the period at the end of the abbreviation is silently deleted.

These few rules help keep the quoted portions as close to the original as is reasonably possible. The reason for such excessive faithfulness to the manuscript is that, since Darwin's penmanship is so poor, a great amount of deviation from the original might make it difficult for scholars unfamiliar with Darwin's hand to trace back from the choppy text of the abstract to either the original manuscript or a facsimile of it. ⁴⁰ Such difficulty would be compounded, of course, if the scholar could see only a photocopy or microfilm, since -- unavoidably -- such facsimiles are often somewhat less readable than the already difficult manuscript. In some cases, however, such meticulous faithfulness to the original forces deviations from standard practices (e.g. titles of books not underlined). These are allowed to stand without comment where their meaning is not ambiguous; if there is any question as to Darwin's meaning (e.g. if the word "Origin" may or may not refer to the Origin of Species), any information which could be found to resolve the ambiguity is added in brackets or in a note.

Regarding unquoted portions of the abstract, the original phraseology of the item is often employed without comment, in an effort to minimize the distortion that inevitably results from summarization. In such unquoted portions, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are modernized and converted to American forms.

Examples of the application of many of these editorial conventions can be observed by comparison of the following three versions of the letter from Darwin to Lyell, Friday, [June 25, 1858]: 1) the calendar entry, page 56; 2) the first five pages of manuscript for this letter, reproduced as Figure 4; and 3) the printed text on pages 117-18 of volume 2 of Life and Letters. This will show the relative thoroughness with which a printed text has been corrected in the abstract, the relative faithfulness with which the quoted portions of the abstract follow the original text, and the relative amount of condensation which occurs when passages of the original are reduced to unquoted portions of the abstract.

Textual Devices

Since many of the letters in the calendar have been published in whole or in part, and since both the completeness and the accuracy of these printed versions vary considerably, the following conventional phrases have been employed to indicate roughly how well the printed versions resemble the original letters. The conventions were devised so that -- in the absence of contrary indications -- the reader may assume that only a part of the item being calendared has been printed. The reader may further assume that no alterations of the original text have been made in the printed version; if, on the other hand, alterations are indicated, the reader may assume that these changes are of a serious nature, unless a contrary indication is provided. The conventions are listed in descending order of resemblance to the original (assuming changes to be more odious than omissions):

Corrections provided in the abstracts are designed to rectify the changes and major omissions. When a major omission has been rectified in the abstract, the printed version is described as having only minor omissions.