Darwin Correspondence Project

Abstract

Charles Darwin’s correspondences are an invaluable resource for understanding his theories and works as well as English social life of the 19th century. About 15,000 letters are known, of which many appear for the first time in this hybrid print and digital edition of the Darwin Correspondence Project. It presents an authoritative edition of the letters from and to Darwin that is based on up-to-date scholarly standards and that is as comprehensive as possible. The completion of this project in progress is scheduled for 2022. Currently, all letters until 1875 are online with full transcriptions, and all remaining letters until Darwin’s death in 1882 are available in their metadata and summaries. Explanatory notes and extensive contextual essays provide valuable background information. The technical realisation of the project via the Epsilon framework is convincing as the edition is intuitively easy to use. It is, however, not possible to view the TEI-encoded files of the letters or to download the transcriptions and essays. With plenty of additional material, the Darwin Correspondence Project exceeds the scope of an edition and presents a widely interlinked online project that makes it a valuable and rich resource.

Keywords

• 19th century
• correspondence
• history of science
• letters
• tei