skip to content
Home

Darwin Correspondence Project

To Asa Gray   21 December [1860]1

Down Bromley Kent

Dec. 21

My dear Gray

One word to ask you as soon as ever you have definitely fixed on title of the Reviews2 (if, as I hope, you publish) to send it me & the London Agent or Publisher (it would be best if a regular publisher like Trübner); for if I can hear before my new Edit of Origin is bound (& Printers have not yet sent me 1st sheet) I would ask Murray to permit me to bind in every copy a slip, as advertisement.—3 If possible price had better be fixed likewise.—

In Haste | Ever yours | C. Darwin

I have only just thought of the manner of advertisement leave 2 lines of space at top of diag - intentional gap.

by Asa Gray Professor of Botany, &c. &c. ? Trubner & Co: London.    Price —?—

Footnotes

1
Dated by the reference to the forthcoming publication of Gray 1861 (see n. 2, below).
2
CD hoped that Gray would be able to republish his review of Origin ([Gray] 1860b) as a separate pamphlet that could be distributed in England. See letter to Asa Gray, 11 December [1860].
3
CD added a ‘Postscript’ to the preliminary pages of the third edition of Origin to advertise the publication of Gray’s reprint. It reads (Origin 3d ed., p. xii): An admirable, and, to a certain extent, favourable Review of this work, including an able discussion on the Theological bearing of the belief in the descent of species, has now been separately published by Professor Asa Gray as a pamphlet, about 60 pages in length. It is entitled, ‘Natural Selection not inconsistent with Natural Theology. A Free Examination of Darwin’s Treatise on the Origin of Species, and of its American Reviewers. By Asa Gray, M.D., Fisher Professor of Natural History in Harvard University. Reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly for July, August, and October, 1860. London: Trübner and Co., 60, Paternoster-row. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1861.’ (Price 1s. 6 d.) When first published in the Atlantic Monthly, the review was unsigned. The leaf of advertisements bound at the end of this edition of Origin lists only works published by John Murray (see Freeman 1977, pp. 78–9).

Bibliography

Freeman, Richard Broke. 1977. The works of Charles Darwin: an annotated bibliographical handlist. 2d edition. Folkestone, Kent: William Dawson & Sons. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, Shoe String Press.

Origin 3d ed.: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. 3d edition, with additions and corrections. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1861.

Origin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859.

Summary

Asks AG to send his reviews [of Origin] as soon as he has definitely fixed on a title for the pamphlet.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-3028
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Asa Gray
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Gray Herbarium of Harvard University (J. L. Gray autograph collection 50)
Physical description
ALS 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3028,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3028.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 8

letter

Darwin Correspondence Project
darwin@lib.cam.ac.uk

© University of Cambridge 2022

Copyright declaration

Privacy policy

Website by Surface Impression

 

Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge