Darwin Online and the Evolution of the Darwin Industry

Barlow Nora (ed.), Charles Darwin's diary of the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle (London, 1933); Barlow N. , Charles Darwin and the voyage of the Beagle (London, 1945); Barlow N. (ed.), The autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882 (London, 1958); Barlow N. (ed.), “Darwin's ornithological notes”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, ii/7 (1963), 201–78; Barlow N. (ed.), Darwin and Henslow: The growth of an idea (London, 1967).

Barrett P. H. (ed.), “A transcription of Darwin's first notebook [B] on ‘Transmutation of species’”, Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard, no. 122 (April 1960), [245]–296; de Beer G. (ed.), “Darwin's journal”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, ii/1 (1959), 1–21; de Beer G. (ed.), “Darwin's notebooks on transmutation of species. Part I. First notebook [B] (July 1837 — February 1838)”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, ii/2 (1960), 23–73; de Beer G. (ed.), “Darwin's notebooks on transmutation of species. Part II. Second notebook [C] (February to July 1838)”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, ii/3 (1960), 75–118; de Beer G. (ed.), “Darwin's notebooks on transmutation of species. Part III. Third notebook [D] (July 15 to October 2nd 1838)”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, ii/4 (1960), 119–50; de Beer G. (ed.), “Darwin's notebooks on transmutation of species. Part IV. Fourth notebook [E] (October 1838–10 July 1839)”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, ii/5 (1960), 151–83; de Beer G. Rowlands M. J. (eds), “Darwin's notebooks on transmutation of species: Addenda and corrigenda”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, ii/6 (1961), 185–200; de Beer G. Rowlands M. J. Skramovsky B. M. (eds), “Darwin's notebooks on transmutation of species. Part VI. Pages excised by Darwin”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical Series, iii/5 (1967), 129–76.

Handlist of Darwin papers at the University Library Cambridge (Cambridge, 1960).

Useful overviews of Darwin historiography are in Desmond A. Browne J. Moore J. , “Darwin, Charles Robert (1809–1882)”, Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford, 2004), and Bowler P. J. , “Darwin, Charles Robert”, Complete dictionary of scientific biography, xx (Detroit, 2008), 242–9, although the former is in places rather whiggish as regards the victory of historians of science over scientists to control Darwin studies and the sophistication of our field, “now a specialism as rigorous and exacting as any in the life sciences”.

Stauffer R. C. (ed.), Charles Darwin's Natural Selection; being the second part of his big species book written from 1856 to 1858 (Cambridge, 1975).

Barrett P. , The collected papers of Charles Darwin (Chicago, 1977).

Herbert S. (ed.), “The red notebook of Charles Darwin”, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Historical series, vii (1980), 1–164.

Burkhardt F. Smith S. (eds), A calendar of the correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1821–1882 (New York and London, 1985).

Barrett P. H. Freeman R. B. (eds), The works of Charles Darwin (29 vols, London, 1986–89).

Barrett P. H. (eds), Charles Darwin's notebooks, 1836–1844: Geology, transmutation of species, metaphysical enquiries (London and Cambridge, 1987).

Barrett P. H. (eds), A concordance to Darwin's Origin of Species, first edition (Ithaca, NY, 1981); Weinshank D. J. (eds), A concordance to Charles Darwin's notebooks, 1836–1844 (Ithaca, NY, 1981); Barrett P. H. (eds), A concordance to Darwin's Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (Ithaca, NY, 1987); and Barrett P. H. (eds), A concordance to Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Ithaca, NY, 1986).

Keynes R. D. , The Beagle record: Selections from the original pictorial records and written accounts of the voyage of HMS Beagle (Cambridge, 1979), Charles Darwin's Beagle diary (Cambridge, 1988), and Charles Darwin's zoology notes & specimen lists from H.M.S. Beagle (Cambridge, 2000). Another important transcription by Keynes, Darwin's Beagle animal notes (DAR 29.1A), was first published on Darwin Online in 2005.

Di Gregorio M. Gill N. , Charles Darwin's marginalia (London and New York, 1990).

I would here like to repeat my gratitude to an extremely generous donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, for funding Darwin Online after the expiration of the AHRC grant in 2008.

Such as The correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot Project (http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk/project/project.html) and The correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, based at Glasgow University.

An additional difficulty in this regards is the cooperation of institutions that own original manuscripts. Online reproduction is beset with even more difficulties than conventional print reproductions.

This forms the core of van Wyhe John (ed.), Charles Darwin's shorter publications 1829–1883 (Cambridge, 2009).

Hull D. L. , Darwin and his critics: The reception of Darwin's theory of evolution by the scientific community (Cambridge, 1973).

Kohler M. Assert C. Kohler : “Considerable effort has been made by van Wyhe to deal with the problems of the digressive nature of Freeman, but his not having seen the original volumes themselves has again led to errors that will mislead and confuse collectors and scholars who use the website without handling the books. For example, as already noted, when Heinrich Bronn published his German translation of the Origin he used the expression 'naturliche Zuchtung on the title page. By the third edition this had become ‘naturliche Zuchtwahl,’ but in the online version it remains in its original form through the 1882 edition, when the online version no longer lists the title in German.” Kohler and Kohler somehow miss the fact that complete facsimiles of the first, second, third and sixth German editions are available on Darwin Online. Hence readers can see the original works. The bibliographical database records are updated for all items that have been seen, including the third German edition whose title is given correctly. Like Freeman we do not assign exact titles to works that we have not seen. (There have been occasional mistakes of course and we would be grateful to be informed of any errors so they can be corrected.) Kohler M. Kohler C. , “The Origin of Species as a book”, chap. 18 in Ruse M. Richards R. (eds), The Cambridge companion to the Origin of Species (Cambridge, 2009), 350.

The catalogue currently covers the Darwin Archive at Cambridge University Library; the American Philosophical Society; Cambridge University Zoology Museum; Cambridge University Sedgwick Museum; the British Library; Christ's College, Cambridge; University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; Kew Gardens, London; the Linnean Society of London; John Murray Archive, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln; Zoological Society of London; Elgin Museum, Elgin, Moray; Keele University Library, Staffordshire; the New York Botanical Garden; the State Library, Aarhus, Denmark; University of Virginia Library; and University College London and part of that of English Heritage (Darwin Collection at Down House).

Recently published as Chancellor G. van Wyhe J. (eds), Charles Darwin's notebooks from the voyage of the Beagle (Cambridge, 2009).

Freeman R. B. , Charles Darwin: A companion, 2nd online edn, compiled by Asscher Sue and edited by van Wyhe John (2007).

Inspired by Michael Hunter's Robert Boyle website (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/boyle/index.htm).

van Wyhe Reproduced (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 17), 368–9.

Paget J. , Lectures on surgical pathology delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (London, 1853), i, 46.

“The position of the bones of Mastodon (?) at Port St Julian is of interest” (DAR 42.97–99). Transcribed by John van Wyhe (Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/).

Lyell C. , Principles of geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation (London, 1833), iii, 33. Darwin Online uses permanent URLs so that results pages can be saved or emailed to colleagues. The present search is http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/search-results?freetext=thegradualbirth.

van Wyhe John Basman Antranig , “The launch and reception of Darwin Online”, Notes and records of the Royal Society, lxi (2007), 63–65.

See selected press and media notices of Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/press.html.

van Wyhe John , “A reception study in the making? The unprecedented reception of Darwin's private papers online”, Viewpoint: Newsletter of the British Society for the History of Science, no. 86 (June 2008), 5.

van Wyhe John , Darwin (London, 2008).

Herbert S. , Charles Darwin, geologist (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2005).

van Wyhe John , “Mind the gap: Did Darwin avoid publishing his theory for many years?”, Notes and records of the Royal Society, lxi (2007), 177–205.