From E. A. Darwin 13 March [1879]1
March 13
Dear Charles
I have nothing to say against a Prologue but I should like to see two lines that you obtained permission from the author to have a translation made.2 How would a note at the end look by GHD just to give the children correctly & I should like to bring in that Francis Galton author of &c is the son of one of the Daughters. It piles up the glory & would please Francis3
E A D
Footnotes
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to Ernst Krause, 14 March 1879.
In a now missing letter, CD had evidently suggested that a prologue might be added to the proposed translation of Krause 1879a; Krause gave his permission for the translation to be made in his letter of 12 March 1879.
George Howard Darwin had written on consanguineous marriages and was interested in genealogy (G. H. Darwin 1873, 1875a, and 1875b). Francis Galton, CD’s half-cousin, was the son of Erasmus Darwin’s daughter Violetta Galton. Francis Galton was interested in heredity and had written Hereditary genius, in which the Darwins were included in the chapter on men of science (see Galton 1869, pp. 209–10).
Bibliography
Galton, Francis. 1869. Hereditary genius: an inquiry into its laws and consequences. London: Macmillan.
Summary
Sends suggestions for CD’s preface to Erasmus Darwin.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-11931
- From
- Erasmus Alvey Darwin
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- unstated
- Source of text
- DAR 92: B1
- Physical description
- ALS 2pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11931,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11931.xml
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