Ɛpsilon

To Raphael Meldola   25 November [1878]1

4. Bryanston St | Portman Sqe

Nov. 25

My dear Sir

I send my little Preface; which I do not at all like, but which I cannot improve.2 I shd. like hereafter to see it in type.— Mr Bates tells me that Hardwicke & Bohn of Piccadilly intend to go in for publishing solid books, & if your present publisher shd. change his mind Mr Bohn might be worth applying to.—3

yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from Raphael Meldola, 25 November 1878, acknowledging receipt of CD’s preface (see n. 2, below).
2
See letter to Raphael Meldola, 31 October [1878], and letter from Raphael Meldola, 1 November 1878. CD had agreed to contribute a prefatory note to Meldola’s translation of essays by August Weismann (Weismann 1882). The published note is two pages long (ibid., pp. v–vi).
3
Hardwicke & Bogue of 192 Piccadilly, London, were the publishers of Hardwicke’s Science Gossip (Post Office London directory 1878). Either CD or Henry Walter Bates had confused the name with that of Henry George Bohn, who had been well-known as a publisher of several series of cheap format reprints (ODNB).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 4.… Sqe] above del ‘Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11757,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11757