Smithsonian Libraries

A Second Look Uncovers a First Edition: a Manuscript Page from Darwin's Origin of Species

Within the span of about a month, the Dibner Library received two separate inquiries about our lone manuscript page from the draft of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. His popularity is unsurprising, especially during this anniversary year: 2009 is the year Darwin would have been 200, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his Origin of Species, events which are being actively commemorated here.

One inquiry was from a gentleman named Milton D. Forsyth, Jr., who has been tracking down all extant leaves of the first draft of the Origin within his reach; the other from David Kohn, Director and General Editor of the American Museum of Natural History’s Darwin Manuscripts Project (currently called the Darwin Digital Library of Evolution, a project linked to the Biodiversity Heritage Library). Both were seeking pages of the original draft, so I was disappointed to see the note on the back by Darwin’s daughter Henrietta Litchfield, describing the page as containing “the passage… from Chapter VII, p 264 of 5th edn, 1869…”

Mr. Forsyth’s inquiry came first, so I sent him copies of the draft and the disappointing note and asked him to be sure to alert me to any interesting discoveries, should he have any… and he did just that. Henrietta Litchfield’s note did allow some room for interpretation, and happily Mr. Forsyth did not take it as fact, and looked into the matter further. His knowledge of the existing draft pages and the editorial changes that occurred with later editions led him to determine that our leaf is indeed one of only 45 extant sheets from the original Origin manuscript, a fact happily confirmed by Dr. Kohn after reading Forsyth’s analysis. The true origin of our Origin page was apparently buried for a long time, since, as Mr. Forsyth notes, according to a published record of the sale, the manuscript page which sold at auction at Sotheby’s, London, in July 1958, was described as “p. 264 of the 5th ed. 1869.” It may be that Bern Dibner did not realize the gem he had.

Our single manuscript page will be a part of the Darwin Manuscripts Project’s planned edition of all locatable manuscript pages of the Origin of Species’ first edition. The Project was just given grant funding to digitize Darwin’s Library, including the extensive marginal notes in his own hand. Press releases detailing the scope of this project can be found here and here.—Kirsten van der Veen

In case you missed it...

L-R: Assistant Director Martin Kalfatovic, Deputy Director Mary Augusta Thomas, Assistant Director Marcia Adams, Dan Cohen

On September 24, Dan Cohen was the second speaker in the Libraries’ 2009 Lecture Series. His presentation,  “Scholars and the Everywhere Library” is available as a webcast.

For more information about Cohen and his ideas, check out his blog.

For questions about the lecture series, please contact Marcia Adams.—Liz O'Brien

World Digital Library

Director Nancy Gwinn and Assistant Director Martin Kalfatovic attended a reception on September 15 at the Library of Congress for a presentation on the World Digital Library (WDL).

The highlight of the event was when students from Westlake High School in nearby Charles County, Maryland, demonstrated how they used the WDL in class assignments.

(pictured at right, Librarian of Congress James Billington introduces the WDL).

More Postcards from the Cooper Hewitt Library

The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum Library boasts more than 10,000 postcards in its “hidden” collection. Arranged by subject in card file drawers, they range in date from the turn of the century to the 1990’s. In our last post, Parisian fashion was featured. In this second post, the Libraries will feature the architecture of New York and Los Angeles.

Postcards bear testament to seminal moments and monuments of history. They record the interiors and exteriors of some of the most celebrated hotels of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of which no longer stand today. This includes photographs and etchings of buildings from every state in the United States as well as cards from virtually every major European city.

Many of the cards in the collection depict scenes from New York. A few capture the Hotel Astor, a luxury hotel that opened to New Yorkers in September 1904, but in 1967, less than three-quarters of a century later, was demolished to make room for a 50-story office tower. The Astor’s architects, Charles W. Clinton and William H. Russell designed the fashionable hotel in the French Renaissance Beaux-Arts style, and within a year it would open a lavish roof garden, filled with fountains, trees, waterfalls, lilies, and thousands of flowers, hosting famous parties from the early 1920’s until just after World War II.

Several New York postcards document older monuments: the bustling Hotel Rockwell, a popular resort for wealthy urbanites seeking vacation in the Catskills in Monticello, New York, that burnt to the ground in 1909.

Postcards from California include hotels, cityscapes, and mining towns. There are several images of the exterior of The Ambassador, a Los Angeles hotel that hosted the Academy Award ceremonies. the Ambassador also housed numerous presidents, including Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, until he was assassinated in the hotel’s pantry on June 5, 1968. The Ambassador was torn down in 2006.

The California postcard collection also includes numerous early twentieth century views of Californian mining towns and the city of Los Angeles.

Stay tuned for more postcard fun...—Sara O'Keeffe