Charles Darwin, perhaps the most influential person in history, maintained a huge personal library throughout his working life. Until now, 85% of its content was unknown or unpublished. This year, to coincide with Darwin’s 215th birthday, Dr. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online, a scholarly project led by John van Wyhe, has published a 300-page online publication. The catalog of Darwin’s Complete Personal Library, containing 7,400 titles and items in 13,000 volumes, including books, pamphlets and journals.

Previous listings included only 15% of his entire collection. The Darwin Library has also been virtually reassembled, with 9,300 references to copies of the works freely available on the Internet.

“An unprecedentedly detailed examination of Darwin’s entire library allows us to appreciate more than ever that he was not an isolated individual working alone, but an expert of his time who drew on the complex science, research, and other knowledge of thousands of people. Indeed, the sheer size of the library’s works and Its diversity is testament to the extraordinary amount of research Darwin did on the work of others,” said Dr van Weyge.

Discovery of the entire Darwin library

After Darwin’s death in 1882, much of Darwin’s library was preserved and catalogued, but many other items were dispersed or lost, and details of the vast majority of its contents have never been published until now. For many years, scholars believed that Darwin’s library contained 1,480 books, based on books held in two major collections, the University of Cambridge and Down House.

Over 18 years, the Darwin Online project has uncovered thousands of obscure references to Darwin in Darwin’s own catalogs and in lists of items such as pamphlets and magazines originally held in his library. Each reference needed its own detective story to discover the publications Darwin had hastily jotted down. In addition, missing details such as the author, date and source of the clippings in thousands of records in old catalogues were revealed for the first time.

The primary source of information that helped uncover the original content is the 426-page “Charles Darwin Library Catalog” manuscript compiled in 1875. A careful comparison of their abbreviated records revealed 440 unknown titles originally held in the library.

After his death, the inventory of his house recorded 2,065 bound books and an unknown number of unbound volumes and pamphlets. 133 titles and 289 volumes of mostly non-scientific literature were recorded in the living room. Surprisingly, the heritage valuer estimated that the “Library of Science, that is, books relating to science” was worth only £30 12s (about £2,000 today). Indeed, the value of all the books was only £66 10s (about £4,400 today). Today, every book by Darwin is very expensive for collectors.

Other sources of information that helped create a complete Darwin library were pamphlet lists, Darwin’s reading books, Emma Darwin’s diaries, the Catalog of Books given to the Cambridge School of Botany in 1908, and the 30-volume Correspondence. Darwin.

Items that still exist but were never included in Darwin’s library lists include his unbound materials in the Cambridge University Library, books now in other institutional collections, private collections, and books sold at auction over the last 130 years. The combination of these and many other sources of evidence made it possible to reconstruct Darwin’s library.

For example, Darwin’s copy of ornithologist John James Audubon’s 1826 article “Description of the Habits of the Turkey Buzzard (Vultura aura) for the Purpose of Undermining the Common View of its Extraordinary Power of Smell” was sold in 1975. He recorded a reading of Audubon’s review in a lost Galapagos notebook while on a cruise called the “Beagle.” In 2019, a copy of Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1880 novel “Wives and Daughters” appeared at auction.

It bears the following note: “This book was Charles Darwin’s favorite book and was the last book read aloud to him.”

Understanding the Darwin Library

Most of the works in Darwin’s library are, not surprisingly, devoted to scientific subjects, primarily biology and geology. However, the library also contained studies on other subjects that interested Darwin, such as agriculture, animal breeding and behavior, geographical distribution, philosophy, psychology, religion and art, history, travel and language. Most of the works are in English, but almost half are in other languages, especially German, French and Italian, but also Dutch, Danish, Spanish, Swedish and Latin.

Among the hundreds of books not previously known to have been in Darwin’s library is Sun Pictures, an 1872 coffee table that displays photographs of works of art. Another book that we do not know the Darwins acquired was a copy of the popular science book on gorillas that became very popular soon after the publication of On the Origin of Species: Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa by Paul Du Chailleux.

Thousands of shorter items were also found in Darwin’s library, such as an issue of a German scientific journal sent to him in 1877 containing the first published photographs of bacteria, and another article amusingly titled “The Hater, or Colorado Grasshopper.” Darwin’s eclectic resources are available to everyone in his extensive library.