To E. H. Sieveking   11 December 1877

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Dec 11. 1877

Dear Sir,

I thank you sincerely for very obliging letter.1 It would interest me much to see the six letters of my grandfather published but his name & that of Reimarus are so little known that I doubt whether the editor of any journal would think the letters worth printing. If they are brought to England I should much like to see them.2

I remain dear Sir | Yours faithfully & obliged | Charles Darwin

LS

1
The letter has not been found.
2
Erasmus Darwin and Johann Albert Heinrich Reimarus met as students in Edinburgh in 1754. Copies of the six letters from Darwin to Reimarus are in DAR 227.1: 12–13. A note on the verso of one of the letters reads: ‘Letters from Eras Darwin | to Reimarus | from Mr Sieveking who lent originals’. For more on their friendship, see King-Hele 1999, pp. 17–20. Sieveking’s great-uncle, Georg Heinrich Sieveking, was married to Johanna Margaretha, the daughter of Reimarus.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11275,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11275