To Ernst Krause   10 November 1879

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

Nov. 10th 1879

My dear Sir

I write a line to thank you for your note & to say that I have heard from Murray that the Autotype Coy had printed off only a few copies, so that the loss will not be great.— Murray charges only what the Autotype Coy. charge the public, so he makes no profit & it is quite fair that he shd. insist on prepayment.—1 An Italian publisher never paid for the cliches of my Variation under Domestication, & he wd. have lost the whole sum, had I not taken the loss on my own shoulders.2

I was when I wrote rather angry, as I had taken the responsibility of Murray giving the order to the Autotype Coy, but it is all over now. I will send you a copy of the English Edit. of the Life, as soon as it appears, & I do not know why it has not already appeared.3

My dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

1
See letter to Ernst Krause, 4 November 1879 and n. 1. CD had paid John Murray (1808–92) in advance for photographs produced by the Autotype Company of the frontispiece of Erasmus Darwin for the German edition; however, the German publisher Karl Alberts had cancelled the order. No letter from Murray on this subject has been found.
2
The publisher Carlo Vincenzi, who had taken over production of the Italian translation of Variation from a previous firm, failed to pay for stereotypes of the illustrations (see Correspondence vol. 23, letter from R. F. Cooke, 26 May 1875); the Italian translation was never published.
3
Erasmus Darwin was published around the middle of November 1879; CD started receiving thanks for presentation copies about 11 November (see letter from J. S. Burdon Sanderson, [11 November 1879]).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added
1.4 it] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12304,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12304