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Darwin Correspondence Project

4.30 'La Petite Lune', Gill cartoon

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La Petite Lune was a sister paper of La Lune Rousse, and was published, edited and illustrated by André Gill, through 1878-9. It featured a series of caricatures titled ‘Les hommes illustrés’, to which this belongs. Gill again pictures Darwin as a semi-ape, this time swinging nonchalantly from the branch of a tree labelled ‘Arbre de la Science’. Darwin is light-heartedly described in the accompanying text as ‘un singe transformé, perfectionné, sélecté’. As in La Lune Rousse, the writer stresses Darwinism’s affront to religion. 

  • physical location Darwin archive, Cambridge University Library 

  • accession or collection number DAR 140.4.20 

  • copyright holder Syndics of Cambridge University Library 

  • originator of image André Gill; signed at bottom right ‘And. Gill’ 

  • date of creation July or August 1878 

  • computer-readable date c. 1878-07-01 to 1878-08-31 

  • medium and material lithography, partly hand-coloured 

  • references and bibliography La Petite Lune, 10 (August 1878). Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place: volume II of a Biography (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002), p. 378. 


  

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