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Darwin Correspondence Project

To A. W. Bennett   11 March [1873]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

March 11

My dear Sir

I heard only a few days ago that you had ceased to assist the Editor of Nature, & I was extremely sorry to hear it.2

It has just occurred to me to ask you where the wood-blocks are, (which belong to the Linn. Soc.) of the Climbing Plants.3 I am interested on this, as I shall have to borrow them before very long, & they might easily get mislaid at Mss Macmillan’s.—

Will you take promptly the proper steps, & kindly inform me, that I may know where they are. Excuse this trouble, & believe me, Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

Footnotes

The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from A. W. Bennett, 16 March 1873.
Bennett had been subeditor of Nature since 1871; the editor was Norman Lockyer (ODNB).
Bennett had borrowed woodblocks used to print images for ‘Climbing plants’ in order to reprint them in an article he was planning for the journal Nature, which was published by Macmillan & Co.; the article never appeared (see also Correspondence vol. 20, letter from A. W. Bennett, 22 November 1872 and n. 3). ‘Climbing plants’ had been published by the Linnean Society (Freeman 1978) and was reprinted as a book, Climbing plants, by Williams & Norgate. CD had begun work on corrections for Climbing plants 2d ed. in January 1873 (Journal (Appendix II)); it was published by John Murray in 1875.

Bibliography

Climbing plants 2d ed.: The movements and habits of climbing plants. 2d edition. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1875.

Climbing plants: On the movements and habits of climbing plants. By Charles Darwin. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green; Williams & Norgate. 1865.

‘Climbing plants’: On the movements and habits of climbing plants. By Charles Darwin. [Read 2 February 1865.] Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany) 9 (1867): 1–118.

Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.

Freeman, Richard Broke. 1978. Charles Darwin: a companion. Folkestone, Kent: William Dawson & Sons. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, Shoe String Press.

ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.

Summary

Asks about woodblocks of illustrations for Climbing plants [1875].

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-9350
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Alfred William Bennett
Sent from
Down
Source of text
American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.438)
Physical description
ALS 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9350,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9350.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 21

letter