The 1400 letters exchanged between Darwin and Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) account for around 10% of Darwin's surviving correspondence and provide a structure within which all the other letters can be explored. They are a connecting thread that spans forty years of Darwin's mature working life from 1843 until his death in 1882 and bring into sharp focus every aspect of Darwin's scientific work throughout that period. They illuminate the mutual friendships he and Hooker shared with other scientists, but they also provide a window of unparalleled intimacy into the personal lives of the two men.
The phases of Charles Darwin's career have often been defined by the books that he read, from Lyell's Principles of Geology during the Beagle voyage to Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population during his London years. The book that encouraged him to pursue a scientific voyage in the first place was the Personal Narrative of Alexander von Humboldt's travels in Central and South America between 1799 and 1804.
A colourful and insightful exchange occurred in 1865 in a light-hearted conversation between Darwin and Henrietta Huxley, the wife of Darwin's friend and colleague, Thomas Henry Huxley. Like her husband, Henrietta was a close friend and great champion of Darwin and his work. She was also, it seems, a keen devotee of Tennyson.
Dubbed "Darwin's bulldog" for his combative role in controversies over evolution, Huxley was a leading Victorian zoologist, science popularizer, and education reformer. He was born in Ealing, a small village west of London, in 1825. With only two years of formal education, he apprenticed in medicine and then entered the navy, serving as assistant surgeon on H.M.S. Rattlesnake in the South Pacific (1846-1851). He pursued natural history alongside his medical duties, concentrating on the anatomy of marine invertebrates.
In an undated and incomplete draft letter to a "Miss I.", Emma Darwin appears to be arranging for Miss I. to come to Down for a trial period as a secretary. When the letter first came to light, no one had heard of the mysterious "Miss I." and, as far as we knew, Darwin never employed a secretary. Members of his family acted as his amanuenses, read to him, helped with experiments, and read drafts of his work; from time to time he employed someone to make fair copies of his manuscripts. His children's German governess helped with translations, even after she had left the family.
When Darwin returned from the Beagle voyage there was no-one available to describe the fish that he had collected. At Darwin's request Jenyns, a friend from Cambridge days, took on the challenge. It was not an easy one: at that time Jenyns had only worked on fish from the British Isles. He started from first principles and made detailed scientific measurements and descriptions of each new fish on his regular visits to Cambridge. He humorously commented that just the mention of Darwin's name brought on a fishy smell. They saw one another 'only at intervals' but they remained in regular correspondence. Darwin's letters to Jenyns still survive in Bath, where Jenyns moved in 1850.
George Keen (1794-1884) was born in England. He had arrived in Buenos Aires by 1820, making him one of the earliest settlers from Britain. In 1821 he married Mary Yates (1802/3-72), the sister of John, William and Elizabeth Yates, another family of early settlers from England. In 1825 Elizabeth Yates married Edward Lumb, with whom Darwin stayed in Buenos Aires in 1833.
Kennard's interest in science stemmed from her social commitments to the women's movement, her interests in nature study as a tool for educational reform, as well as her place in a tightly knit network of the Bostonian elite. Kennard was one of a handful of American women who carried on correspondence with the British gentleman-naturalist Charles Darwin. On 26 December 1881, Caroline Kennard wrote to Darwin to ask about his position regarding the inferiority of women. Darwin replied on 9 January 1882, referencing his positions in Descent of man (1872), writing that women had superior moral qualities but inferior intellectual qualities when compared to men.
King was born in Parramatta, New South Wales on 31 October 1817, son of Captain Phillip Parker King and Harriett (Lethbridge). His grandfather, also named Philip Gidley King, had been governor of New South Wales. As a child, King travelled to England with his father and in 1824-5 attended school near Deptford in London. From 1826 to1830 he sailed under his father's captaincy aboard MS Adventure, on a voyage to survey the coast of South America. The ship was accompanied by a smaller vessel, HMS Beagle, on her first voyage.
John Lubbock was eight years old when the Darwins moved into the neighbouring property of Down House, Down, Kent; the total of one hundred and seventy surviving letters he went on to exchange with Darwin is a large number considering that the two men lived as close neighbours for most of their lives.
