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The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 - 1913) was one of the world's most important scientists. His seminal contributions to biology rival those of his friend and colleague Charles Darwin, though he is far less well known. Together Wallace and Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1858, and their prolific subsequent work laid the foundations of modern evolutionary biology, and much more besides.
Wallace made enduring scholarly contributions to subjects as diverse as glaciology, land reform, anthropology, ethnography, epidemiology, and astrobiology. His pioneering work on evolutionary biogeography (the science that seeks to explain the geographical distribution of organisms) led to him becoming recognised as that subject’s ‘father’. Beyond this Wallace is regarded as the pre-eminent collector and field biologist of tropical regions of the 19th century, and his book The Malay Archipelago (which was Joseph Conrad’s favourite bedside reading) is one of the most celebrated travel writings of that century and has never been out of print. Wallace was a man with an extraordinary breadth of interests who was actively engaged with many of the big questions and important issues of his day. He was anti-slavery, anti-eugenics, anti-vivisection, anti-militarism, anti-Imperialism, a conservationist and an advocate of woman's rights. He strongly believed in the rights of the ordinary person, was a socialist, an anti-vaccinationist (for rational reasons), and a believer in naturalistic, evolutionary spiritualism. He did not come from a privileged background and was largely self-taught. For a brief biography see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/mini-biography
The Wallace Correspondence Project (WCP) was founded by George Beccaloni in 2010. Its aims are to locate, digitise, catalogue, transcribe, interpret and publish Wallace's surviving correspondence and other manuscripts. About 5,700 letters to and from Wallace are currently known to survive, and they are held by c. 240 institutions and individuals worldwide. Wallace's letters are a biographical treasure trove, which provides a far better picture of the 'real' Wallace than his heavily edited and censored published writings (e.g. his autobiography My Life (1905) and his letters in Marchant's Letters and Reminiscences (1916)). For example, Wallace never even mentions his wife's name (Annie) in any of his published writings, including his autobiography. The letters are also key to gaining a deeper understanding of his scientific and other work: how and why his ideas arose, and how they evolved over time.
The WCP is unlocking this valuable resource by gathering all the letters together for the first time, and transcribing them so that they can be more easily read and information within them discovered using electronic searches for words and phrases. The vast amount of unpublished information which is coming to light will surely form the basis for numerous articles, scholarly papers, PhD theses and perhaps the first definitive biography.
Epsilon is being used by the WCP's as its online archive of Wallace's correspondence. It replaces our previous archive, Wallace Letters Online, which was last updated in 2015. The process of editing the transcripts and associated metadata is a work in progress which will take many years to complete. Our project’s policy is, however, to make the information we have available to users at the earliest possible opportunity, even if it is incomplete and/or imperfect. For a guide to our data, including the protocols we use for metadata and transcriptions, please see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
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Doesn't have Fred Birch's current address. ARW has forgotten whether he has written to Professor Baldwin, the author of Organic Evolution.
Thanks Poulton for his new book. ARW's new book -reviews and sales. More about his garden -his mania for alpine plants (especially the genus Primula). Birch's travels. Rothchild's butterfly collections at Tring. ARW has been ill with bowel troubles, eczema and "other incidents in old age". Details of his diet, the fact that his son is now an invalid and the trouble that he is having with servants so his wife and daughter are doing most of the work.
About the drought and Poulton's visit. His alpine garden. Comments on his eczema "which has now developed into acute rheumatic gout in right shoulder and both hands, which renders the complex muscle motions used in dressing and undressing a succession of acute and often very painful twinges. By careful dieting it is getting slowly better.".
Arrangements for Poulton's visit.
On Bergson's ideas and his own.
Working on two small books. One is on environment and morality, the other is on the labour problem.
On a booklet containing an anticipation of Darwinism. Two of ARW's books have been translated into Japanese - would the Bodleian like them?.
About Poulton's addresses, to be given to the Linnean Society. Also mentions Bedrock. [Poulton's presidential address to the Linnean Society for 1913 and 1914 was about two pamphlets supposedly written by George Washington Sleeper, i.e. "Shall we have Common Sense? Some Recent Lectures" (Boston, 1849) and "shall We Have Free Speech: Education and its Offspring, Civilization" (Providence, 1860). Poulton's address was published as "A Remarkable American Work upon Evolution and the Germ Theory of Disease", Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 1913-1914].
Refers to ARW's wife (Annie's) health and encloses a returned letter from ARW to Ben Miller (dated 18 January 1913) and mentions the presentation of a book to the Linnean Society.
The Fund is now £236. Marchant wants to issue order for medallion of ARW. Asks if Poulton can get the unpaid promises to him. Miss B. is in town & is going to bring some boxes of Java butterflies for Meldola to hand over to Poulton for the Hope Museum. She will let him know the history of the collection.
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