Edition of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin

American Council Of Learned Societies, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

PROJECT ABSTRACT SES 0135538 Edition of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin Duncan Porter/American Council of Learned Societies The Correspondence of Charles Darwin makes available, for the first time, full, authoritative texts, edited according to modern textual principles and practices, of all the extant, known letters written and received by Charles Darwin. Following a comprehensive worldwide search, about 14,500 letters have been located. This figure includes the letters written to Darwin. Both sides of the correspondence are being published in order to provide as much information as possible. The Correspondence has a wide audience, including historians of science, philosophy, and sociology, biological and geological scientists, scholars of the 19th century, and general readers, for whom are brought together materials now dispersed among widely scattered repositories. Readers are instructed by the expository letters and entertained by the social life of the English country gentry, besides becoming better acquainted than was ever before possible with the life and mind of Charles Darwin. Prior support of the Darwin Correspondence Project from NSF has contributed substantially to the preparation and publication of two editions of "A Calendar of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1821- 1882" (1985, 1994), twelve volumes of "The Correspondence of Charles Darwin" (1985, 1986, 1987, l988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2001), and "Charles Darwin's Letters: A Selection, 1825-1859" (1996). The letters written during the period covered by this grant proposal are a part of Darwin's work and career that has been comparatively unexplored and overshadowed by the publication of his "On the Origin of Species" (1859). However, the continuing botanical studies, the gathering of information for "Variation under Domestication" (1868), "The Descent of Man" (1871), and "The Expression of the Emotions" (1872), and the preparation of the fifth edition of the "Origin" (1869) are of great importance for the understanding of Darwin's evolutionary thinking during this important period of his life. The planned research involves completion of volumes 14 to 17, from 1866 to 1868, of the "Correspondence" during the grant period. The year 1868 fills two volumes because of its large number of letters. In addition, considerable research and editing should be accomplished on volumes 18 to 20, from 1869 to 1871. These volumes cover Darwin's most significant investigations of heredity in humans, animals, and plants, yield an understanding of Darwin as an experimenter and innovator in plant physiology, psychology, and other fields, and provide extensive materials for studying the transformation of biological science in the nineteenth century.