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To John Murray   10 July 1880

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

July 10 1880

My dear Sir

I have received Revises of the 2 first sheets of my book, & I now want to beg a little advice. The book, I believe to possess some value, & I shd. expect for some years a few copies would be sold.— I shall give away about 40 or 50 copies.— Now had 750 or 1000 copies better be printed off? The book will cost me a good deal & I do not want to waste more money than can be avoided. It would, however, be a pity if in the course of a year or two or three copies could not be bought.— Can you give me an idea of cost of paper & printing off of 250 copies?1

Secondly, before long an Index, (& I shd. wish a good one to be made) must be thought of— Can you find an Index-maker & arrange about fair remuneration for me?2

I will order a set of sheets for Index-maker, & 2 other sets for German & perhaps French Translations.3 I enclose a few instructions about making Index.—

Pray believe me | My dear Sir | yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

1
CD was correcting proof-sheets of Movement in plants; he expected to pay the initial cost of publication (see letter to R. F. Cooke, 16 July 1880).
2
The indexer was Matilda Smith; an entry in the John Murray copies ledger (National Library of Scotland, John Murray Archive & Publishers’ Collections, MS.42733) recorded £8 paid to ‘Mrs Smith for indexing The power of movement in plants’.
3
The German translation of Movement in plants was made by Julius Victor Carus (Carus trans. 1881); the French translation was made by Édouard Heckel (Heckel trans. 1882).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added
1.6 copies] after del ‘all the’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12651,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12651