Ɛpsilon

From R. F. Cooke   2 October 1872

50A, Albemarle Street, London, W.

Octr. 2 1872

My dear Sir

This morning we receive a letter from Mr Koch of Stuttgart, about the Heliotypes & he encloses now for the first time the size of the page on which he is printing your new work & you will see that instead of small 8vo. like our edition, it is a regular demy 8vo. page, like yr work on “Variation of Animals & Plants”.1

I will of course go to the Hel: Compy. & see what can be done.2

I have been away a month & find no copies of the 7 Plates delivered here, according to promise. They were to send in, as fast as they finished them 1000 sets, at a time.3

I hope they are not going to throw us over & I think it might be as well if you wrote a rather strong letter on the point to them.

Your’s faithfully | Robt. Cooke

Chas. Darwin Esq

1
The paper size of the English edition of Expression was small or crown octavo (190mm x 126mm); that of Variation was demy octavo (221mm x 142mm). The heliotype plates of the photographs for Expression had been designed to fit the smaller size page. Eduard Koch was the head of E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, CD’s German publisher. The firm had ordered 2000 plates (see letter to J. V. Carus, 23 September 1872).
2
The Heliotype Company Limited had premises at 22 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London (Post Office London directory 1872).
3
John Murray had agreed to supply plates for all the foreign editions as well as the English edition of Expression. Cooke had ordered 8000 plates in total (see letter from John Murray, 3 September [1872]) For more on CD’s use of the heliotype process, see Prodger 2009, pp. 108–10.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8539,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8539