Ɛpsilon

To ?   23 October 1880

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

October 23 1880

Dear Sir

I am much obliged for your courteous letter of Oct. 8th.—1 I have no difficulty in answering your questions; but I cannot see how my answers can be of interest to anyone.—

I was born on Feb. 12th. 1809.— On my return home after the voyage of the Beagle, I opened my first note-book for facts bearing on the origin of species in July 1837.2 In June 1842 I wrote a brief sketch of the notions then arrived at; & this was enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of 230 M.S. pages.3 The Origin of Species was published near the close of 1859.—

Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Charles Darwin

1
No letter to CD dated 8 October 1880 to which this might be a reply has been found.
2
CD’s ‘Notebook B’ is DAR 121; for a transcription, see Notebooks, pp. 167–236.
3
There are various rough drafts and fair copies of CD’s species sketches of 1842 and 1844 (see DAR 6: 1–14, 16–50 for the 1842 sketch and DAR 7 and DAR 113 for versions of the 1844 essay).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12771,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12771