Over 20,000 documents relating to Darwin will now be recognised by UNESCO as internationally significant ©The Trustees of the Natural History Museum
The extensive archive of material written and produced by Charles Darwin has now been recognised by the United Nations as a globally importance cultural asset.
The documents will join other important archives such as the illuminated manuscripts of Charlemagne’s court and the discovery of insulin.
Over 20,000 documents relating to Charles Darwin are now recognised as internationally significant following an application to list his archive on the International Memory of the World Register.
The material spans his professional career and provides a valuable and at times personal insight into Darwin’s life and groundbreaking scientific work. One letter to his wife Emma, for example, details his plans for the publishing of his work should he die, while in another more humorous letter Darwin talks about an observation of how black bears catch fresh-water insects “by swimming with mouth open ‘like a whale’”.
The documents include letters written to and from Darwin, books he published, images of the man and ephemeral material including a postcard he sent to the zoologist Albert Günther.
This vast body of material is preserved in the archives of the six institutions who worked collaboratively on the application and include the Natural History Museum, Cambridge University Library, Down House, The Linnean Society, National Library of Scotland and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
By being designated as a Memory of the World by UNESCO, the archives will be regarded as critically important to global science while highlighting the necessity of its long-term preservation and accessibility.
The Natural History Museum has an extensive collection of copies of On the Origin of Species, including first editions ©The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London
Over 1,400 of these artefacts are cared for in our library and archives. Andrea Hart is our Library Special Collections Manager who looks after many of these documents, and was involved in writing the application to UNESCO for the material to be recognised with the assistance of the Memory of the World UK Committee.
“It’s been quite a long process to go through, but to be successful is really fantastic,” says Andrea. “The preservation of and engagement with our archival heritage is incredibly important on a global scale.”
“This recognition is all the more significant as the UK hasn’t put in an application for UNESCO for a collection and archive for quite some years, so it’s been brilliant that this collaborative effort was successful.”
You can look though many of Darwin’s letters yourself on the Darwin Correspondence Project website.
Over his life, Charles Darwin rose to become one of the most famous scientists in the world.
He is best known for his central role as co-discoverer of the theory of evolution, culminating in the publication of his most famous book On the Origin of Species. But he was a prolific researcher on other topics, publishing dozens of books on a whole range of subjects from worms to plants.
Darwin was an even more profuse letter writer. Over 15,000 of these letters have been recorded and transcribed by the Darwin Correspondence Project, giving an extraordinary view into not only his areas of scientific interest, but also the process through which he developed these ideas and insights into his personal life.
The personal letters from Darwin give a much richer insight into the scientist that the finished text alone ©The Trustees of the Natural History Museum
“We’ve got many his published works in all editions and translations, but a lot of the archive is the buildup to that, allowing us to understand the scientific discussions of the day,” Andrea explains. “It is this correspondence and the evidence that is within these letters that informs much of our thinking and understanding of how science and communications worked back in that day.”
“Sometimes you also get comments on their personal health or insight into family relations, pastimes and social networks, allowing you to get to know the insides of someone a lot better than just having whatever they produced in terms of science at the end of the process.”
Even the small slice of letters held in our own archives reveal an interest in a wide diversity of subjects. In one letter dating to 1860 he writes about sub-aerial volcanoes, in others he talks about drone bees and the sex determination of caterpillars, while in another he discusses a specimen of an Ethiopian wolf.
In another letter to Günther in 1877, Darwin even provides more information on some of the specimens that he collected while on the voyage of the Beagle, including spiders from Rio de Janeiro and a King George’s Sound, Australia. Darwin writes, “if printed on white paper, it then may be mine & the entrance in my catalogue is “caught on board the Beagle”.”
The documents allow researchers to connect up specimens, letters and published papers, such as those which refer to the Toxodon fossils collected by Darwin and still looked after in our collections ©The Trustees of the Natural History Museum
There are also a number of correspondences between Darwin and Richard Owen, the founder of the Natural History Museum, London, and an extraordinary scientist in his own right.
In one of these letters the two men discuss the fossil remains of an animal known as Toxodon. It was Darwin who first collected the bones of this animal during his journey around the world and sent them back to London. It was then Owen who studied and described the bones as belonging to a long-extinct rhino-like creature. These bones are to this day still preserved in our fossil collections.
In the letter, Darwin provides comment on Owen’s paper before expressing concern for his health, writing, “I send a perfect revise of Toxodon. I have read it over, & marked the very few errata which caught my eye, which may help you in your final revision. I hope with all my heart you will return quite comfortable, and you must not work so hard, as usual, for some time.”
By getting these documents, among thousands of others, added to the UNESCO register it is hoped the huge and influential legacy of Darwin will be fully recognised as part of their wider programme to protect documentary heritage as a cornerstone of cultural identity and peace-building.
Bringing together materials held by multiple institutions across the UK for the first time, promotes a greater awareness of ensures that his work's scientific, cultural, and historical value is preserved and remains accessible for future generations.
The Museum Library contains the worlds largest collection of works by and about Charles Darwin.
From giant fossil mammals to mysterious moths, uncover the colourful stories behind some of our most fascinating specimens.
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