To John Murray   10 September [1861]

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

Sept. 10th

My dear Sir

Will you be so good as to send off immediately by Post, if possibl be so good as to send off immediately by Post, if possible, or by quickest channel, a copy of last Edit. of Origin to

Madelle. Clemence Auguste Royer 2. Place de la Madeline Lausanne Switzerland

As she has agreed with a Publisher for a French Translation.—1

My Book seems exciting much attention in Germany, judging from the number of discussions sent me.2 To my surprise a Dutch Translation was sent me lately.—3

I have never seen an advertisement of the new Edition, which seems to me a great pity as it was certainly considerably improved. I hope that the B. of Oxford & Co. have not made you sorry that you published it. I have sometimes thought that this might be the case.

My dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Charles Darwin

Endorsement: ‘Sept. 10th 1861’

1
Clémence Auguste Royer’s French translation of Origin, published by Guillaumin et cie and V. Masson et fils, Paris, appeared in 1862 (Freeman 1977). Royer, who had taught in a girls’ school in Wales for a year, was living in Lausanne, where she offered lectures to women on philosophy and science. Prior to reading Origin, Royer had become a convert to Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck’s evolution theory, and in the preface to her translation she advocated an evolutionary view of human origins and development (DSB). See also Harvey 1987.
2
The Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL contains several ‘discussions’ of CD’s theory sent to him before September 1861 by German authors. These include: Köstlin 1860, Meding 1861, Pelzeln 1861, and Wagner 1860. For discussions of the reception of Origin in Germany, see Montgomery 1974, Corsi and Weindling 1984, and Pancaldi 1984.
3
Tiberius Cornelius Winkler’s Dutch translation of Origin appeared in 1860 (Winkler trans. 1860). See letter from T. C. Winkler, 7 July 1861. A copy of the translation is in the Darwin Library–CUL.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

3.2 as] over ‘&’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3250,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3250