Ɛpsilon

To Smith, Elder & Co.   15 May 1876

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

May 15. 76

Dear Sir

The Geolog: Soc will lend us the three wood-blocks, & send you the cliches, so that I have been able to prepare the sheets for the printers.1 They are dispatched to you, registered, by this post, together with title, preface &c. If you think you can improve the title, or have any kind of suggestions to make, I shall be glad to profit by them.2 I have appended, according to my usual custom, a list of my works, but I do not care about its insertion, if you prefer to confine the list to books published by yourself.3

Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

P.S. I have added a memorandum for the Reader or Compositor.

P.S. What shall you do for a copy of the coloured Section Pl. I. S. America?4

If you cannot get a copy I must cut mine out of my book.

By the way, no doubt I shall have to beg you to sell stereotypes of all the Plates & wood cuts for the German Edition.5

LS(A)

1
Smith, Elder & Co. were publishing new editions of Volcanic islands and South America, and had asked CD for the original woodblocks; some had been used to illustrate papers that had been published by the Geological Society of London (see letter from Smith, Elder & Co., 1 May 1876 and n. 7, and letter to the Geological Society of London, 5 May 1876).
2
The new editions of Volcanic islands and South America were published as a single volume with the title Geological observations on the volcanic islands and parts of South America visited during the voyage of HMS ‘Beagle’ (Geological observations 2d ed.).
3
Smith, Elder & Co. had published Volcanic islands and South America, but most of CD’s later books were published by John Murray. Nonetheless, a full list of CD’s publications was bound into Geological observations 2d ed. before the title page.
4
Plate I in South America showed a section of the Peuquenes or Portillo Pass of the Cordillera.
5
An edition of CD’s collected works was being published in German by E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. The translations of Volcanic islands and South America were made by Julius Victor Carus (Carus trans. 1877a and 1878b). Carus made his translations from copies of the first editions of these works provided by Joseph Dalton Hooker (see letter from J. D. Hooker, 26 April 1876 and n. 1).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.1 & … cliches,] interl in CD’s hand
2.1 Ch. … Edition. 6.2] in CD’s hand

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10507,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10507