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On the origin of species 1859: Surviving Manuscript Leaves

July 1858 - March 1859



Transcribed and edited by: Randal Keynes & David Kohn





00000 0000 Editors' Introduction By Randal Keynes & David Kohn Cambridge University Library DAR 185: 109a (6) On verso pencil drawing coloured in water-colour of man mounted on plum confronting man mounted on carrot. Initialled 'FD'. Kept with other similar drawings with same initialling. Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and William Huxley Darwin

Manuscript and Union Approach



It has long been known that Darwin wrote the Origin of Species in a few months after July 1858, using the manuscript of the much longer work he had been writing and planned to publish as Natural Selection, and that a number of leaves of his autograph manuscript survive in Cambridge University Library, the American Philosophical Society and other collections in Britain and the United States. During recent years other single leaves have appeared on the market from time to time, one being sold at Sotheby's New York in 2005 for nearly $275,000. The leaves have been widely dispersed and cannot now be looked at alongside each other. In order to understand the manuscript, we need a coordinated treatment on the basis of a 'union' approach by holders and Darwin scholars. When the Creation of the Origin unit of the Darwin Manuscripts Project was planned, we adopted the manuscript of the Origin of Species as a pioneer venture for DARBASE, the union catalogue of Darwin's manuscripts that is the backbone of our project.



Accordingly, the leaves of the manuscript are all included in the Darwin Manuscripts Project's DARBASE, which is being developed as the necessary superstructure for a unified edition of all Darwin's scientific manuscripts. This resource is being compiled with the active collaboration of Cambridge University Library, the American Philosophical Society, English Heritage at Down House, the Natural History Museum, and the Charles Darwin Trust.



Earlier this year we were put in touch with Mr Milton Forsyth, who has been carrying out a similar search for leaves of the Origin manuscript for some time. We have exchanged information with him and each side had information that was fresh for the other. We are grateful for his help for our project.



As part of the programme for the union catalogue, we are continuing a comprehensive search of all major libraries and other collections for Darwin manuscripts, and we will add all we find to DARBASE. If any more leaves of the Origin manuscript are found by others, we will be grateful for information and will include them in DARBASE if the necessary data can be made available.



Surviving leaves



Through our search for Origin leaves and with Mr Forsyth's contribution we have now identified and located 36 numbered sheets of the manuscript with eight attached slips for alterations or additions of a sentence or more. An additional six leaves, known to exist from auction sales, have yet to be located. There are also two autograph drafts for the title-page, a single page of the fair copy, one chapter head summary, and a set of the final printer's proofs.



Calculating from the appearance on page 301 of the published book of the text on leaf 355 of the manuscript, its last surviving numbered page, we estimate that the full manuscript could have contained as many as 550-580 numbered sheets and the 42 surviving leaves are indeed rare, amounting to some 7% of the total. The surviving sheets include one of Chapter I, Variation under domestication, one reported of Chapter III, Struggle for existence, two of Chapter V, Laws of Variation, 23 located and 5 reported of Chapter VI, Difficulties on theory, seven located and one reported of Chapter VII, Instinct, two of Chapter VIII, Hybridism, two located and one reported of Chapter IX, On the imperfection of the geological record. The leaves for Chapters V-VIII are all based on passages in Darwin's Natural Selection of which the text is available. Only the last surviving leaf is from one of the chapters that Darwin wrote for the first time when he produced the Origin of Species.



Edition



Our edition of the surviving leaves of the Origin manuscript consists of records of each leaf with a digital scan, a transcript and notes. More information will be provided soon on the physical characteristics, the corresponding text in Natural Selection, the corresponding text in the Origin of Species (1859), features of the text and the known history of the leaf up to now.



The text of the Origin of Species had a long history from Darwin's first sketch in 1842 to his final edition seventeen years later. After the first sketch he expanded it into the 1844 essay and wrote it out fully so that it could be copied and read by others. In 1856 at Lyell's instigation, he started writing a slightly expanded version of the 1844 essay with some significant additions to the argument, and as he wrote, the work grew into a much larger text which he planned to publish with the title Natural Selection. In June 1858 when he had completed ten chapters of that book, he received the letter from Alfred Russel Wallace in which Wallace set out his own theory of evolution. After the joint announcement at the Linnean Society of Darwin and Wallace's theories, Darwin wrote the 'abstract' of his theory to be published as the Origin of Species. On reading his text in proof he found the text unclear in many places and made extensive changes. The book was published by John Murray in November 1859; it was sold out at the publisher's sale to the trade, and a second edition appeared a month and a half later. Darwin produced four fresh editions with many changes and additions in the following years to the final edition in 1872. Over three quarters of the sentences in the first edition were revised once or more in later editions and over a third more were added. By then Darwin had also produced two further works that were versions of parts of his formerly planned longer work - his full treatment of The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication published in 1868, and his account of human origins, human nature and sexual selection in The Descent of Man in 1871.



Darwin wrote and revised the manuscript and proofs of the Origin of Species between July 1858 and October 1859. He based Chapters I-VIII and XI on his manuscript for Natural Selection and he wrote Chapters IX-X and XII-XIV separately. He added a number of new facts to his book and he corrected a few mistakes. Darwin's correspondence and certain other sources in Cambridge University Library's Darwin papers and the John Murray Archive provide much detailed information about the writing of the manuscript and Darwin's further adjustments to the text through the proof stages. The points will be analysed and put together for an understanding of Darwin's method in drafting the work and adjusting the text in proof, together with the sequence of events and what they reveal about his work on the text.



In his work on the draft Darwin devoted his main effort to clarifying the text for the general reader. In their place between the manuscript of Natural Selection and the published text of the Origin of Species, the surviving manuscript leaves together with Darwin's correspondence with John Murray, Hooker and Lyell show how hard Darwin worked on the clarification and how difficult he found it, leading to a physical breakdown in May 1859. After having his first draft of the text fair-copied, he made revisions on that text and further changes to the first and second proofs before he was satisfied. The material points to some of the difficulties Darwin felt he had in explaining his theory and how he tried to overcome them. What can be determined about the changes he made will be explained later in the project.



After publication



Darwin often used the backs of his old manuscripts for rough notes and his son Francis recorded that 'in this way, unfortunately, he destroyed large parts of the original MS. of his books.' (Life and Letters 1.121.) He also allowed his children to use paper he had used on one side for their notes and drawings

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A pile of papers was kept in a cupboard under the stairs for the children to use for drawing. One sheet that has been recovered from this pile is a sheet of the fair copy of Chapter I of the Origin with a drawing by Darwin's son Francis aged ten at the time.



In the 1860s many people began to collect autographs of public figures. A number of people wrote to Darwin requesting samples of his handwriting with a signature. See for instance his correspondence with Hermann Kindt, Editor of The Autographic Mirror, in 1865. He copied out passages of his writings for some, and in one case signed a leaf of the manuscript of the Origin for his brother Erasmus Alvey Darwin to give to a neighbour in London, giving the date 'June 26th 1871'.



After Emma Darwin's death in 1896, Henrietta Darwin played a part in clearing the house for the lettings that followed. Between 1902 and 1923 she gave single leaves of the Origin manuscript to a number of acquaintances including the scientists Henry Fairfield Osborn and Karl Pearson, often with an accompanying note that the leaf was one from the Origin manuscript. In 1923, shortly before her eightieth birthday, she wrote to her niece Margaret's husband Geoffrey Keynes, 'I have some sheets of the Origin wh. I mean to divide up to those of your generation who would like to possess them.' She then distributed the sheets to her nieces Gwen Raverat, Nora Barlow and Margaret Keynes, Margaret's husband Geoffrey and their four year-old son Richard. One of Richard's two numbered leaves is now on deposit at Cambridge University Library; the other is on display at Down House.



Union approach again



The manuscript of the Origin of Species is of great interest for what it reveals about the writing of the Origin. It is now the most widely scattered single manuscript of any work by Darwin. It would be helpful to be able to link the leaves digitally with each other and with other correspondence and publications. The web provides a perfect way of reuniting, building and providing msterial.



As mentioned above, the web edition is the first venture in the Darwin Manuscripts Project's union approach to Darwin material, following the outstanding example of the Darwin Correspondence Project. We offer the venture as a model for other ventures covering different aspects of Darwin's heritage, and for other scientists and topics.



Thanks



Our thanks to the American Museum of Natural History, Cambridge University Library, Down House (English Heritage) for their generous contributions and support for the Darwin Manuscripts Project. Our particular thanks go to the contributing libraries and their professional staffs for making this digital gathering of the Origin leaves possible: American Museum of Natural History, American Philosophical Society, Cambridge University Library, Eton College Library, Houghton Library (Harvard University), Lehigh University Library, Natural History Museum, Smithsonian Institution (Dibner Library),and University College London.











