This page shows the correspondence of Charles Darwin on a timeline.

The timeline is shown on three bands at different scales, and each letter appears in just one of those bands.

Along the top are letters whose date is known reasonably precisely, shown by day. Along the middle are those letters whose date is known at least to the nearest year. And along the bottom are those letters whose dates are known only very imprecisely.

You can move the timeline by dragging the mouse. The three bands will remain synchronized as you do this. Because it has a larger scale, dragging the lower band will move the timeline more quickly than the upper bands and is useful for quickly rushing through years. Dragging the upper band will give you more precise control.

Clicking on a letter will give a brief summary and a link to the full letter, where available.

Red dots represent letters Darwin received, Blue those he wrote, Purple third party letters. (mnemonic: red = read).

The very top straw coloured band is used to show various events in Darwin's life.

On slower computers you may have to wait a few seconds for the timeline to load. Use of this tool is impractical on very small monitors. Click on the cross to close this window.