WCP5401

This is Violet Wallace’s invitation from the Linnean Society to the Celebration of the 50^th Anniversary of the reading of ARW’s joint paper with Charles Darwin on 1 July 1858. The counterfoil shows she was allocated Row C, Seat 18.

Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882). English naturalist and writer, and jointly with ARW, originator of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Charles Darwin was writing up his theory in 1858 when he received an essay from ARW in Ternate, Indonesia, describing ARW’s own theory of natural selection. Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker agreed on a joint paper to be presented at the Linnean Society of London (see Endnote 4). The papers entitled respectively as "On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection" incorporated Wallace's writing and extracts from Darwin's 1844 essay and his 1857 letter to Asa Gray. This attracted little notice, but spurred Darwin to write an abstract of his work which was published in 1859 as his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

A learned society founded in 1788, for the study and dissemination of taxonomy and natural history, named in honour of Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist, regarded as the father of modern taxonomy.

Wallace, Violet Isabel (1869-1945) ARW’s daughter.