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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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William's fees and subscription to the Electrical Institution; tickets to the Zoo; ARW recovering from illness; greenhouse plants killed by frost, boiler and pipes now fitted and Wareham engaged to stoke boiler morning and evening; snowdrops, primroses, Christmas roses and other plants in flower in garden; death of major Lang; Violet working on "Lessons on familiar animals"; ARW preparing to begin various reviews and articles; hopes [William and Portheim] getting on well with evening classes, asks for more details of [Portheim] and any news of George Silk's godson Edgar Williams who works at Siemens.
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Writes regarding sending £20 for William's birthday; family health; arrival of a circular from college [Finsbury Technical College]; Violet going to Liverpool to interview for a teaching position in a girl's school, salary offered, advantages of living in Liverpool; ARW's purchase of Chambers' Encyclopaedia; new stamp album; ARW's article on "Inaccessible Valleys" in the Nineteenth Century, re-reading Lorna Doone; complete works of Dickens for Ma's (William's mother Annie Wallace) birthday and Scott's novels for Violet; Ponton's shilling pin-hole camera.
Regarding Mr Crooke's behaviour towards William; enclosing a letter from his sister Violet (not present); mentioning Mr Stead and (spirit?) writing.
Violet's career; loss of a parcel of books sent by rail.
Marking of exams; upcoming holidays; attempts to let the house; discovery of missing parcel of books; anatomy of flowers, including an ink sketch of a flower section with parts labelled; Violet's career.
Attempts to let house; Violet's expenses; flora and fauna of Chee Tor and Chee Dale; Deepdale.
Attempts to let house; article on House of Lords sent to Harris; letter from her brother William.
Letting house and proposed holiday in the Lake district; her brother William's new lodgings in Newcastle-on-Tyne; loss of the ship Victoria, Violet's expenses.