Press release July 2009: 'The most significant gap year in history'
HMS Beagle specimens and an original manuscript page of the ‘Origin of Species’ star in Cambridge University Library’s Darwin exhibition
Specimens and manuscripts from Charles Darwin’s Beagle voyage – not seen together since that historic circumnavigation of the globe – will be reunited at the opening of Cambridge University Library’s new exhibition next Monday.
A Voyage Round the World: Charles Darwin and the Beagle Collections in the University of Cambridge opens on July 6 and brings together the world’s foremost Darwin archive, held at the Library, with a wealth of Darwin collections held around the University.
Included among Darwin’s manuscripts, books and correspondence will be the letter offering the 22-year-old Cambridge graduate a place on board the Beagle.
An original sheet from the manuscript of On the Origin of Species –subsequently used as drawing paper by Darwin’s children – forms one of the most striking exhibits, as do the sketchbooks of official Beagle artist Conrad Martens.
Curator Alison Pearn of the Darwin Correspondence Project said: “This is a wonderful and unique opportunity to share the University’s remarkable collections. Individually, the manuscripts and specimens are invaluable to scholars; together they bring Darwin and his ideas powerfully to life in a way that everyone can enjoy for the rest of this Bicentenary year.”
The free exhibition, officially opened on July 8 by William Huxley Darwin, the naturalist’s great-great grandson, reveals how Darwin’s experiences on the Beagle played an essential role in the formulation of his theories throughout the rest of his life
In what has been described as ‘the most significant gap year in history’, Darwin, an able but untried Cambridge graduate, left England aboard HMS Beagle on what was originally intended to be a two-year admiralty expedition. He returned nearly five years later from ‘by far the most important event in my life’ as a fully-fledged member of the scientific establishment.
The exhibition gives us a much better understanding of Darwin the man: student, son and brother and, later, husband and father. What we learn is that Darwin was by no means a lone genius; he surrounded himself with people, and the support of his family, friends, teachers, ship-mates and correspondents was vital to his development as both man and scientist.
Particularly touching – and valuable to scholars – is the sheet of the Origin of Species with drawings by Darwin’s children on the back. Few pages of the manuscript survive but some were apparently preserved by the family solely because, after Darwin finished with it, he gave it to his children as drawing paper.
Among the other exhibits are notes and specimen lists, together with some of the plant, animal and mineral specimens they describe; geological maps and cross-sections; contemporary sketches made by the Beagle’s artist, Conrad Martens; and a detailed scale model of the Beagle herself.
The exhibition’s title comes from an inscription inside one of the books on display, given to Darwin by John Stevens Henslow, his mentor and the Cambridge professor of botany who recommended him for the Beagle. It reads: ‘J. S. Henslow to his friend C. Darwin on his departure from England upon a voyage round the World’.
This year marks both the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 800th Anniversary of the University of Cambridge.
The exhibition opens to the public on Monday, July 6 and runs until Wednesday, December 23, 2009.
ENDS
Members of the press, please email Stuart Roberts, University of Cambridge Communications Officer, for more information: sjr81@admin.cam.ac.uk or call 01223 764982.
A Voyage Round the World at the Exhibition Centre, Cambridge University Library, runs until December 23, but is closed 31 August and 14–19 September inclusive. Exhibition opening times: Monday–Friday 09.00–18.00. Saturday 09.00–16.30, Sunday closed.
Admission free. Telephone: 01223 333000. Website: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/
Notes to editors
1. For 600 years the University Library has been central to the support of teaching and research at Cambridge. More than eight million books and periodicals, one million maps and many thousands of manuscripts occupy more than one hundred miles of shelving, which extends by a further two miles every year. The Library collections vary hugely in age and content. Chinese oracle bones from the second millennium BC can be found alongside the latest online scientific journals; illuminated decorations in medieval manuscripts can be studied as originals and as digitised images delivered over the Internet.
2. Highlights of the University Library’s special collections include the papers of Isaac Newton, an archive of Charles Darwin’s correspondence, archives of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, the library of the Royal Commonwealth Society and a copy of the Gutenberg Bible from 1455, the earliest European example of a book produced using moveable type.
3. As a legal deposit library since 1710, the Library is entitled to acquire a copy of each book and journal published in the UK and Ireland, which results in a rich and diverse collection providing future scholars with the raw materials for research in many fields.
4. With 2 million of its volumes on open shelves, readers have the largest open-access collection in Europe immediately available to them.