There was a time when people who wanted to read Charles Darwin’s scientific papers—the portfolios of notes, observations, essays, and more that would help the great naturalist articulate his radical idea of natural selection in On the Origin of Species—had to travel to England and visit a reading room at Cambridge University.
Since 2006, a wealth of primary materials has been digitized and brought online, available to anyone with an interest and an internet connection. The Museum’s Darwin Manuscripts Project, working closely with Cambridge University Library, has made available some 26,000 pages written between 1835 and 1882 at darwin.amnh.org. The documents, posted as high-resolution, full-color images, form a record of a scientist at work.
And then there are the more intimate items, which offer a glimpse into Darwin’s daily life: for example, the Darwin Manuscripts Project includes dozens of colorful drawings made by Darwin’s children on the backs of loose leaf pages, some with their father’s writing on the other side.
The sketches, which range from fanciful battles between vegetables to an imagined family crest, likely helped preserve manuscript pages for posterity, says Kohn.
“You also see in these drawings how thin the line of separation was between Darwin at work and home and family,” says Kohn.
Read more on the Museum blog.
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