To Charles Kingsley 30 April [1867]1
Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.
Ap. 30
My dear Mr Kingsley
I fully agree with you on the importance of giving to a certain extent a scientific character to Fraser’s Mag.; & I do assure you that it would have given me sincere pleasure to have assisted you in any way.2 But at present I really cannot: I am daily knocked up by correcting proof sheets & the printers are a dozen sheets a head of me, so that I greatly doubt whether I can finish the book by November when Murray wants it.3 Hence it would be ruin to me to stop work for a week or fortnight, & I could not write an article in less time than this. I have so much unpublished matter half completed that I have often vowed I wd never write miscellaneous articles, but I shd have been much tempted under other circumstances to have broken my vow at your request.
So I hope that you will forgive me & believe me | my dear Mr Kingsley | yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.
Wellesley index: The Wellesley index to Victorian periodicals 1824–1900. Edited by Walter E. Houghton et al. 5 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1966–89.
Summary
Regrets that he is too busy getting his book [Variation] ready for publication to contribute an article to Fraser’s Magazine.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-5520
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Charles Kingsley
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- B. C. Guild (private collection)
- Physical description
- LS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 5520,” accessed on 18 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-5520.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 15
