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The expression of emotions
Summary
Darwin’s work on emotional expression, from notes in his Beagle diary and observations of his own children, to questionnaires, and experiments with photographs, was an integral part of his broad research on human evolution. It provided one of the main…
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- … the subject of human evolution in Origin of Species (1859), and then embarked on a series of …
2.23 Hope Pinker statue, Oxford Museum
Summary
< Back to Introduction Henry Richard Hope Pinker’s life-size statue of Darwin was installed in the Oxford University Museum on 14 June 1899. It was the latest in a series of statues of great scientific thinkers, the ‘Founders and Improvers of Natural…
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- … Ruskin, The Oxford Museum, ‘From original Edition, 1859. With Additions in 1893’ (London and …
Origin is 160; Darwin's 1875 letters now online
Summary
To mark the 160th anniversary of the publication of Origin of species, the full transcripts and footnotes of nearly 650 letters to and from Charles Darwin in 1875 are published online for the first time. You can read about Darwin's life in 1875…
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- … shillings. He had been experimenting on these plants since 1859. The highly technical work was a …

Discussion Questions and Essay Questions
Summary
There are a wide range of possibilities for opening discussion and essay writing on Darwin’s correspondence. We have provided a set of sample discussion questions and essay questions, each of which focuses on a particular topic or correspondent in depth.…

Thomas Henry Huxley
Summary
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…
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- … after the publication of Origin of Species in 1859. He presented lively summaries of Darwin’s …

Origin: the lost changes for the second German edition
Summary
Darwin sent a list of changes made uniquely to the second German edition of Origin to its translator, Heinrich Georg Bronn. That lost list is recreated here.
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- … feel so profound a respect, expressed about the year 1859 (see Prof. Rudolph Wagner, ‘Zoologisch …

The whale-bear
Summary
Darwin came to regard ‘bear’ as a ‘word of ill-omen’. In the first edition of Origin he told the story of a black bear seen swimming for hours with its mouth wide open scooping insects from the water ‘like a whale’. He went on to imagine that natural…
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- … the speculation on the bear & the whale, of which I dare say you have heard enough, simply …

Darwin’s species notebooks: ‘I think . . .’
Summary
I have lately been sadly tempted to be idle, that is as far as pure geology is concerned, by the delightful number of new views, which have been coming in, thickly & steadily, on the classification & affinities & instincts of animals—bearing…
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- … selection , published in the Origin of Species in 1859 and the foundation for the life and …

Darwin in letters,1866: Survival of the fittest
Summary
The year 1866 began well for Charles Darwin, as his health, after several years of illness, was now considerably improved. In February, Darwin received a request from his publisher, John Murray, for a new edition of Origin. Darwin got the fourth…
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- … Since the publication of Origin in November 1859, Darwin had continued gathering and organising …
2.27 William Couper bust, New York
Summary
< Back to Introduction In 1909 the centenary of Darwin’s birth and the fifty years anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species coincided. In recognition of this historic milestone, a grand celebration and international colloquium took place…
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- … OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 1809 1859 1909’. The installation of the bust …

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
Summary
George Eliot was the pen name of celebrated Victorian novelist Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880). She was born on the outskirts of Nuneaton in Warwickshire and was educated at boarding schools from the age of five until she was 16. Her education ended when she…
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- … George Eliot was the pen name of the celebrated Victorian novelist Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880). She …
Darwin’s study of the Cirripedia
Summary
Darwin’s work on barnacles, conducted between 1846 and 1854, has long posed problems for historians. Coming between his transmutation notebooks and the Origin of species, it has frequently been interpreted as a digression from Darwin’s species work. Yet…
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- … difficult to abandon this homology when it was challenged in 1859 by August Krohn. As he admitted in …

Alexander von Humboldt
Summary
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…
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- … if they give rise to better ones.’ Humboldt died in 1859, six months before Darwin’s Origin …

Before Origin: the ‘big book’
Summary
Darwin began ‘sorting notes for Species Theory’ on 9 September 1854, the very day he concluded his eight-year study of barnacles (Darwin's Journal). He had long considered the question of species. In 1842, he outlined a theory of transmutation in a…

Orundellico (Jemmy Button)
Summary
Orundellico was one of the Yahgan, or canoe people of the southern part of Tierra del Fuego. He was the fourth hostage taken by Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, in 1830 following the theft of the small surveying boat. This fourteen-year old boy was…
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- … a mission in Tierra del Fuego, but antagonism developed in 1859 when the returning Yahgan families …

Correlation of growth: deaf blue-eyed cats, pigs, and poison
Summary
As he was first developing his ideas, among the potential problems Darwin recognised with natural selection was how to account for developmental change that conferred no apparent advantage. He proposed a ‘mysterious law’ of ‘correlation of growth’ where…
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- … probably in reply to such a request – and told Asa Gray in 1859 that he still wanted information …

Darwin in letters, 1861: Gaining allies
Summary
The year 1861 marked an important change in the direction of Darwin’s work. He had weathered the storm that followed the publication of Origin, and felt cautiously optimistic about the ultimate acceptance of his ideas. The letters from this year provide an…
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- … units, and, for a breif period after their formation in 1859, membership carried with it great …

Darwin in letters, 1868: Studying sex
Summary
The quantity of Darwin’s correspondence increased dramatically in 1868 due largely to his ever-widening research on human evolution and sexual selection.Darwin’s theory of sexual selection as applied to human descent led him to investigate aspects of the…
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- … the direct result of natural selection ( Variation 2: 185–9). Wallace seized upon this point in a …

Darwin in letters, 1865: Delays and disappointments
Summary
The year was marked by three deaths of personal significance to Darwin: Hugh Falconer, a friend and supporter; Robert FitzRoy, captain of the Beagle; and William Jackson Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and father of Darwin’s friend…
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- … been sent the proof-sheets before publication. Letters after 1859 throw light on Darwin’s continuing …

Fake Darwin: myths and misconceptions
Summary
Many myths have persisted about Darwin's life and work. Here are a few of the more pervasive ones, with full debunking below...
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- … Many myths have persisted about Darwin's life and work. Here are a few of the more pervasive ones, …