The mammoth library of Charles Darwin, made up of thousands of books and journals, has been unveiled for the first time. The world-famous botanist accrued a stunning assortment of over 13,000 books throughout his career.
Up until now, a whopping 85 percent of the formidable collection was unbeknownst to the public. This reveal comes in light of what would have been the 215th birthday of Shrewsbury’s most celebrated son on Monday, Feb 12.
A 300-page online catalogue christened ‘The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online’ details Darwin’s complete personal library. Sporting a diverse range of 7,400 titles across its hefty 13,000 volumes, it features books, pamphlets and journals that provide a rich insight into Darwin’s curiosity.
Until this grand reveal, only 15 percent of Darwin’s collected works were known about. In addition to making book titles public, his vast library has also been virtually reconstructed with 9,300 links available, granting free access to these works online.
Dr John van Wyhe, the head honcho of this project from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Department of Biological Sciences stated: “This unprecedentedly detailed view of Darwin’s complete library allows one to appreciate more than ever that he was not an isolated figure working alone but an expert of his time building on the sophisticated science and studies and other knowledge of thousands of people.
“Indeed, the size and range of works in the library makes manifest the extraordinary extent of Darwin’s research into the work of others.”
After his death at 73 in Kent in 1882, much of Darwin’s library was kept safe and listed.
However, many other items were lost or scattered, and details of most of the contents have never been shared until now. For a long time, scholars have said that Darwin’s library had 1,480 books, based on those that are still in the two main collections, the University of Cambridge and Down House.
Over 18 years, the Darwin Online project has found thousands of Darwin’s hard-to-find references in his own catalogues and lists of things like pamphlets and journals that were originally in his library. Each reference needed its own “detective story” to find the publications that Darwin had quickly written down.
Missing details like author, date or where clippings came from in thousands of records from older catalogues have also been found for the first time. A big source of information that helped to show the original contents is the 426-page handwritten “Catalogue of the Library of Charles Darwin”, made from 1875.
Careful comparison of its shortened entries revealed 440 unknown titles that were originally in the library. An inventory of Darwin’s homemade after his death recorded 2,065 bound books and an unknown number of unbound volumes and pamphlets.
In the drawing room, they found 133 titles and 289 volumes of mostly non-science books.
Dr van Wyhe noted that the valuer at the time thought Darwin’s “Scientific Library that is books relating to Science” was worth just 30 pounds and 12 shillings – about £2,000 now.
All his books were valued at only 66 pounds and 10 shillings, which is around £4,400 today.
But any book owned by Darwin is super valuable to collectors these days.
To figure out all the books Darwin had, they also looked at lists of pamphlets, his reading notes, Emma Darwin’s diaries, a catalogue of books given to the Cambridge Botany School in 1908, and the letters Darwin wrote.
