Ɛpsilon

From F. B. Sanborn   12 January 1882

American Social Science Association, | Boston,1

January 12, 1882.

Charles Darwin, Esq. | Beckenham, (Orpington) | Kent. England.

Dear Sir:

I have the honor to send you some recent publications of this Association, and to ask that you will give us the pleasure of enrolling you among our Corresponding Members.2

You were elected at the General Meeting held last year in Saratoga, but I have delayed writing you until I could send you in print the transactions of the Department of Education, at which your letter to Mrs. Talbot. was read.3

We have now printed not only your letter, but the interesting paper contributed by you to Mind, in 1877, and some other papers, a portion of which will be new to you.4

Mrs. Talbot is pursuing her enquiries into Infant Developement with zeal and success, and they have awakened much interest in America, which your careful observations will do much to guide in the right channel.5

Mr Alcott, now 82 years old, is considering whether he shall not edit and publish his observations on his daughters, from 1831, to 1843.6

Yours very truly, | F. B. Sanborn | General Secretary of the American Social Science Association.

1
The letter is written on American Social Science Association notepaper, which lists the association’s officers and committee members.
2
CD was proposed as an honorary member of the American Social Science Association at the general meeting on 6 September 1881 (see Journal of Social Science 14 (1881): 34).
3
The enclosures have not been found; CD evidently sent them to William Erasmus Darwin (see letter to W. E. Darwin, 9 February 1882). CD had replied to a letter from Emily Talbot about the study of infant development (see Correspondence vol. 29, letter to Emily Talbot, 19 July 1881). CD’s letter was read at the general meeting as part of the report of the secretary of the education department (see Journal of Social Science 15 (1881): 6–8).
4
CD’s paper, ‘Biographical sketch of an infant’, was reprinted in Journal of Social Science 15 (1881): 33–40, together with other papers, including Talbot’s translation of extracts from William Preyer’s Die Seele des Kindes (The mind of the child; Preyer 1882; Journal of Social Science 15 (1881): 44–8).
5
For her studies of infant development, see Talbot ed. 1882.
6
Bronson Alcott never published his observations on children; however, extracts from his diary were printed in Journal of Social Science 15 (1881): 8–10. His four daughters were Anna Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and May Alcott.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13615,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13615