The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: Volume 24, 1876

Description

This volume is part of the definitive edition of letters written by and to Charles Darwin, the most celebrated naturalist of the nineteenth century. Notes and appendixes put these fascinating and wide-ranging letters in context, making the letters accessible to both scholars and general readers. Darwin depended on correspondence to collect data from all over the world, and to discuss his emerging ideas with scientific colleagues, many of whom he never met in person. The letters are published chronologically: volume 24 includes letters from 1876, the year in which Darwin published Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom, and started writing Forms of Flowers. In 1876, Darwin's daughter-in-law, Amy, died shortly after giving birth to a son, Bernard Darwin, an event that devastated the family. The volume includes a supplement of 182 letters from earlier years, including a newly discovered collection of letters from William Darwin, Darwin's eldest son.

Frederick Burkhardt (1912-2007), the founder of the Darwin Correspondence Project, was President of Bennington College, Vermont (1947-57) and President of the American Council of Learned Societies (1957-74). Before founding the Darwin Correspondence Project in 1974, he was already at work on an edition of the papers of the philosopher William James. He received the Modern Language Association of America's first Morton N. Cohen Award for a Distinguished Edition of Letters in 1991, the Founder's Medal of the Society for the History of Natural History in 1997, the Thomas Jefferson Gold Medal of the American Philosophical Society in 2003 and a special citation for outstanding service to the history of science from the History of Science Society in 2005. James A. Secord has served as Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project since 2006. He is also Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Christ's College. Besides his work for the Darwin Project, his research focuses on the history of science from the late-eighteenth to the early-twentieth centuries. His book, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (2000) won the Pfizer Prize of the History of Science Society. He has recently written on scientific conversation, scrapbook-keeping and public scientific displays.

" a superb series beautifully produced, beautifully readable, efficiently indexed, supportively but not gossipily annotated." The Times Literary Supplement" " this authoritative work is a model of scholarship in both its comprehensiveness and supporting documentation which provides a rich source of background, biographical and bibliographical detail." The Naturalist" "Every now and then publishing and academe work together to produce books so splendid that it seems ungrateful not to acquire them: this promises to be another such." The Guardian" "These volumes are indeed treasures of high scholarship every real science library needs this series." Trends in Ecology and Evolution" Reviews of earlier volumes: "Nothing in recent history of science quite tops the achievement of the volumes of Darwin correspondence. It is our own Human Genome Project." Annals of Science