Ɛpsilon

To John Murray   5 December [1860]1

Down Bromley Kent

Dec. 5

My dear Mr Murray

One line to thank you for your note & to remind you (in case you shd. forget) that copies of the Diagram must be Printed off.—2 May I earnestly beg you to have the Plate carefully inspected; for if it prints the small letters & figures badly, I assure you that parts of my Book will be as unintelligible as Hebrew.—

I shall be glad to hear, when you have decided how many copies you will print off—the more the better for me in all ways, as far as compatible with safety;3 for I hope never again to have to make so many corrections or rather additions which I have made in hopes of making my many rather stupid reviewers at least understand what is meant.—   I hope & think I shall improve the Book considerably.—

Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin

There is very good article in Macmillan on the “Origin”.—4

1
Dated by the reference to the new edition of Origin and to the article in Macmillan’s Magazine (see n. 4, below).
2
The diagram in Origin illustrating divergence was inserted between pages 116 and 117. It had been separately printed for the first edition (see Correspondence vol. 7).
3
According to CD’s journal (de Beer ed. 1959), 2000 copies of the third edition of Origin were initially printed. See also Peckham ed. 1959, p. 21.
4
Fawcett 1860.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.3 assure you] ‘you’ interl
2.3 again] interl
2.3 which I have made 2.4] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3010,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3010