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Darwin Correspondence Project

University of Cambridge: “For nearly fifty years successive teams of researchers on both sides of the Atlantic have been working to track down all surviving letters written by or to Charles Darwin, research their content, and publish the complete texts. The thirtieth and final print volume, covering the last four months of Darwin’s life, will be published in early 2023 and all the letter texts – more than 15000 between 1822 and 1882 – are now published online. Like a 15000 piece jigsaw puzzle, the letters build up a more detailed picture than we have ever had before of the course of Darwin’s life and development of his thought. Like any jigsaw, adding a new piece can alter what we see: the final volume and this online release also contains 400 letters which have come to light, or been reinterpreted in just the last 6 years. Those 400 letters flesh out the whole of Darwin’s life from his time on board HMS Beagle, through the research and writing – and re-writing – of On the Origin of Species, to the years immediately before his death. And the process of discovery has not stopped – this website will already contain letters that arrived too late for the last print volume.  Discover more about the final months of Darwin’s life in our Life and Letters series, 1882: Nothing too great or too small. See a full list of letters from 1882.”

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