News | May 8, 2023

Charles Darwin's Life in Letters at New York Public Library

Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

Map of the Andes route from Santiago to San Fernando, by Thomas Sutcliffe, 1834. In his letter to the Beagle’s captain, Robert FitzRoy, Darwin complained that he could not find a map to direct him south in the shadow of the Andes to San Fernando. But he met a “strange genius” named Thomas Sutcliffe, in Santiago, who drew him this double-sided map from memory. The route is continued on the other side.

The New York Public Library, in partnership with Cambridge University Library, has launched a new exhibition, Charles Darwin: A Life in Letters which celebrates the recent completion of the Darwin Correspondence Project, a 45-year endeavor to publish all of Charles Darwin’s letters.

After his five-year voyage on the Beagle early in his life, Darwin’s health broke down, and while working largely from home, he used the postal service to conduct research with collaborators around the world. On display will be a selection of original correspondence exchanged between Darwin and his family, friends, and fellow researchers from Brazil to Italy to South Africa to Australia to his own garden. The exhibition is presented in the Wachenheim Gallery on the first floor of the Schwarzman Building and will be on view through August 5, 2023.

Visitors to the exhibition will also see portraits and objects from Darwin’s world: one of his plant specimens from the Galápagos Islands; a sketch map of the Andes; and a page from On the Origin of Species re-used by the Darwin children for an art project.

Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

Drawing by Darwin’s children on manuscript page of Origin of Species, late 1850s. Darwin did not generally keep the manuscripts of his books. This rare page of his first draft of On the Origin of Species survives only because his children reused it as drawing paper and, like many mothers, Emma kept their artwork. The drawing is charming, but using manuscript pages for artwork was perilous: part of another version of Origin that Darwin sent to Hooker for comment was destroyed when it was mixed up with discarded notes and the Hooker children covered it with pictures

Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

Letter to Kathrine, Lucy, and Margaret Wedgwood, 4 August 1862. Darwin’s children were not the only ones involved in his research: his entire extended family helped out. Here he thanks his nieces— “My dear Angels! I can call you nothing else!”—for their help examining the flowers of Lythrum (loosestrife) as he researched adaptations that promoted crossbreeding.

Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

Tree of Life, from Notebook B, ca. 1837 - before September 1838. In 1837, just returned from his voyage on the Beagle, Darwin first tackled the problem of how new species came to be. In a series of pocket notebooks he jotted down the ideas that ultimately led to the theory of natural selection. In the first of these, to visualize the workings of heredity and descent, he drew three branching tree-like diagrams. Although he later abandoned the line of thinking captured here, this one, exploring the balance between extinct and living species, has become the iconic symbol of evolutionary thinking.

"Darwin’s discoveries demonstrate how dogged and persistent research can produce discoveries that change the world and the value of collaborating with people of diverse backgrounds and experiences. We hope this exhibition inspires generations to explore and push the boundaries of science,” said Elizabeth Denlinger, co-curator of this exhibition along with Dr. Alison M. Pearn of the Darwin Correspondence Project.

The Library has also curated Charles Darwin: Off the Page, a complementary collection of portraits, maps, and illustrations. The installations, located on the third floor galleries, show both the larger world of Darwin’s work and the intimate spaces of his home, Down House, shared with Emma Darwin and their seven children.

In the Print Gallery, environmental graphics of Darwin's personal world line the walls, flanked by maps showing the global reach of his correspondence both in general and in particular for his late work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). The Library’s collection of photographs of those expressions by the French physiologist G.B. Duchenne de Boulogne will be on view, alongside contemporary illustrations by Mark Pernice of the twining and insectivorous plants which Darwin researched in his last years.