Darwin Correspondence Project

The Universities pages contain resources based on Darwin’s correspondence of particular relevance to higher education courses in a range of subjects, including cultural and social history, literature, women’s studies, and media and communications.  There is also useful contextual information under “Themes”, and more resources are being developed within two active research initiatives on Darwin and Gender and Darwin and Human Nature: these can be found on their own pages.

Letters as a primary source: using Darwin’s correspondence in seminar discussions and essay writing provides students with an accessible and provocative source with which to develop a more comprehensive picture of Darwin’s life and work. The letters allow students to place Darwin’s published writings and notebooks within a broader social context, as well to explore the vital role of communication networks in science.  The teaching resources on this site include those originally developed for final-year undergraduates in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Darwin and Science teaching modules, developed in association Harvard University, can also be found here.

Dramatisation of Darwin letters: the Project commissioned a dramatisation of correspondence between Darwin and the Harvard botanist, Asa Gray, exploring a scientific friendship that crossed both the Atlantic and spanned a theological gulf.   A two-actor version of the script of Re:Design is available through the link, right, for not-for-profit performance; it has been performed successfully at a number of colleges, museums, and conferences in Britain, Europe, and the United States.  If you decide to perform it, we would very much like to hear from you.