Contents of Charles Darwin’s entire personal library revealed for first time

submitted 8 months ago by MicroWave edited 8 months ago

www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/11/charles…

300-page catalogue details thousands of books, journals, pamphlets and articles in naturalist’s library

Details of Charles Darwin’s vast personal library, from a paper on epileptic guinea pigs to the Elizabeth Gaskell novel he adored, are being published in their entirety for the first time.

The project has involved nearly two decades of painstaking, detective-like work to track down the thousands of books, journals, pamphlets and articles in the naturalist’s library.

John van Wyhe, the academic who has led the “overwhelming” endeavour, said it showed the extraordinary extent of Darwin’s research into the work of others.

“It also shows how insanely eclectic Darwin was,” Van Wyhe said. “There is this vast sea of things which might be an American or German news clipping about a duck or invasive grasshoppers. That’s been the fun part, not the formal books but the other things … all of which pool together to make the theories and publications we all know.”

100

Log in to comment

2 Comments

https://archive.org/download/crossref-pre-1909-scholarly-works/10.1113%252Fexpphysiol.1908.sp000001.zip/10.1113%252Fexpphysiol.1909.sp000039.pdf

There seems to be a reference to the epileptic guinea pigs in that paper, but that is the closest I could find.

(Sorry. I ended up basically ignoring most of the post after I read about the existence of that research.)