Darwin: 100% of the scientist’s library is available on the internet

The author and naturalist Charles Darwin he died in 1882 and only now, for the first time, his library, made up of thousands of books, periodicals and pamphlets, has been virtually reassembled.

He became world famous because of the book ‘On the Origin of Species’, published in 1859, in which he explains the scientific concept of natural evolution.

Now, in honor of the naturalist’s 215th birthday, completed on February 12th, the Darwin Online project team has launched the catalog with more than 7,400 titles and 13,000 volumes that belong to the scientist’s library.

This 300-page catalog has 9,300 links that take the reader to copies of the books available on the internet for free access. Have you ever imagined reading everything Darwin read one day?

Author and naturalist Charles Darwin – Photo: Reproduction

Extraordinary collection

The project was led by historian Dr. John van Wyhe, who works at the National University of Singapore. According to him:

“The size and variety of works in the library manifest the extraordinary extent of Darwin’s investigation into the work of other authors.”

Maintaining an updated catalog of everything available in the library It was already a habit of Darwin’s during his lifetime.

The last manuscript, from 1875, had 426 pages. After the author’s death, the collection was preserved and duly registered.

Over time, however, some of the content was lost or split and went to other places. Two collections of 1,480 books, for example, went to the University of Cambridge and to Down House, Darwin’s family home, in Downe, England.

These small collections remain open to the public, but they represent only 15% of the complete and original collection.

Van Wyhe and his team realized that it would be worth rescuing the complete collection and recreating it virtually. This began in 2007.

Thorough process

Over the course of 18 years, the team examined every paper, document, letter, reading notebook and manuscript to arrive at the entire collection of Darwin’s books.

During the process, thousands of previously unknown titles were discovered. The researchers also had to recover works sold in auctions over the last 100 years, a real piece of research.

The collection is surprising in several aspects, mainly due to the enormous number of books related to the author’s topics of interest, such as biology and geology.

Darwin, however, was not restricted to this. He read important philosophers and had significant collections of books on psychology, art, history, religion, agriculture, travel, animal behavior, and creation.

When it comes to languages, almost half of the works are in French, German, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Spanish, Danish and Swedish.

This fact is surprising, since the naturalist came to be known as an intellectual who mastered few languages.

“Exploring Darwin’s eclectic library shows different sides of the scientist and allows people to gain insights into who he was as a person. The impression this gives is that he was a voracious reader and consumed a surprising amount of books,” says van Wyhe .