WCP4789

Letter (WCP4789.5169)

[1]

Broadstone, Dorset

April 19th. 1904

Edmund Evans Esq.

Dear Mr. Evans

Many thanks for your kind letter. I am glad you appreciate so fully my last book.1 I am very much inclined to agree with you that all great discoveries & ideas are received as impressions from higher minds. My book has been very well received on the whole but there have been no adequate reviews from men of science [2] either one way or the other. Most of the astronomers committed themselves to condemnation of the article in the "Fortnightly", & did

not take the trouble to read the book carefully before equally condemning it.

Mr. Maunder2 of the Royal Observatory, however, wrote a favourable review in "Knowledge" (in Nov. 1903 I think)3 after a very favourable one on the article.

The final [verses] are, as I state, by Tennyson, and are in Macmillan’s 1894 edition of his works at p. 856. [3] But I [put]— "The Question" and "The Answer" myself— his heading being— "God and the Universe".

I am glad to say we are all very well and just now are very busy with our rather large garden.

With best wishes to Mrs. Evans & yourself.

Believe me | Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace. [signature]

There was also a very nice review in "Nature"4 no doubt by an Astronomer; but then I quoted Lockyer5 the Editor largely, & he is an old friend !

A.R.W. [signature]

1
Alfred Russel Wallace, Man’s Place in the Universe; A Study of the Results of Scientific Research in Relation to the Unity or Plurality of Worlds (London: Chapman & Hall, 1903).
2
Edward Walter Maunder (1851-1928). English astronomer. He was spectroscopic assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich from 1873. He was a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (1875) and a driving force in the formation of the British Astronomical Association in 1890 (which unlike the RAS was open to all classes, sexes, etc).
3
Knowledge, vol. 26, no. 218 (December 1903), pp. 268-70
4
‘Our Unique Earth’, Nature, vol. 69 (25 February 1904), pp. 389-90.
5
Joseph Norman Lockyer (1836-1920). English scientist and astronomer. He, along with the French scientist Pierre Janssen, is credited with discovering the gas, Helium. He is also known for being the founder and first editor of Nature started in 1869.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP4789.5169)]

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Revision history

Transcribed by Lester, Ahren [2013-06-05]

Please cite as “WCP4789,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 2 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP4789