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To John Murray   8 January [1872]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

Jan. 8th

My dear Sir

Will you be so good as to give orders for the immediate printing off of copies of the Diagram for the new Edit. of the Origin.2 The new Edit will be (with Index) I think 448 pages; & as it has no illustrations, do you not think 6s is too dear for a cheap Edit? Would not 5s be better?3 Pray think of this. The public are accustomed to novels for 1s.—

Yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Mr Dallas has made an excellent Glossary.—4

1
The year is established by the references to the sixth edition of Origin, which was published in 1872.
2
A fold-out diagram of species descent was included in all editions of Origin; in the sixth edition it faced page 90.
3
Origin 6th ed. was 458 pages long with 21 pages of preliminaries. It sold for 7s. 6d. The first and fifth edition had sold for 15s., and the second, third, and fourth for 14s. (Peckham ed. 1959, pp. 16–22).
4
Origin 6th ed. included for the first time a glossary by William Sweetland Dallas (see Correspondence vol. 19, letter to R. F. Cooke, 13 October [1871]).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.1 immediate] interl
3.1 Mr … Glossary.—] added in margin

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8152,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8152