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From John Murray   6 January [1876]1

50, Albemarle St. | W.

Jan 6

My Dear Sir

At last a move has become perceptible in the Expression book. That is to say I cannot supply the demand made at my sale by 40 copies wanted for home use.—

I have therefore ordered 500 plates to be worked:—hitherto an unnecessary expense while the 2000 copies lay dormant in my warehouse— I hope the move may continue—2

The Index of Var. under Dom has been for 2 days in Printers hands—3

Cooke is feeling his way as to the numbers to print so will write you word as soon as he is able to determine.4

I am My Dear Sir | yours faithfully | John Murray

Chas Darwin Esqr

1
The year is established by the reference to the publication of Variation 2d ed. (see n. 3, below).
2
Eighty copies of Expression were sold at Murray’s annual sale dinner in November 1875 (DAR 210.11: 4; on sale dinners, see J. Murray 1908–9, p. 540). Of 7000 copies printed of the first edition of Expression in 1872, 6200 were sold immediately (Nature, 14 November 1872, p. 35). A total of 2404 copies remained unsold by September 1873, including a second print run of 2000 made in December 1872, and only 7 had been sold at the trade sale in November 1874 (Correspondence vol. 20, letter from R. F. Cooke, 6 December 1872; Correspondence vol. 21, letter from John Murray, 25 September [1873]; Correspondence vol. 22, letter from R. F. Cooke, 17 November 1874).
3
The second edition of Variation, published in February 1876, was printed by William Clowes & Sons; they were responsible for entering CD’s corrections to the index (see Publishers’ Circular, 1 March 1876, p. 168, and Correspondence vol. 23, letter to R. F. Cooke, 29 August [1875]).
4
Robert Francis Cooke, who was managing the publication of the second edition of Variation on Murray’s behalf, had proposed a print run of 1250 (see Correspondence vol. 23, letter from R. F. Cooke, 22 October 1875).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10347,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10347