Owning multiple copies of a book isn’t that unusual. There’s that extra copy for the bath, the duplicate Christmas present you don’t have the heart to return, or maybe you’ve just made home with someone with similar interests – and library: always a good idea. But no one has hundreds of copies of the same title – do they?
Sure they do. Meet the front end of the Huntington Library‘s 252 strong collection of Darwin’s Origin of Species – all 20 feet of them. I snapped this at the permanent ‘Beautiful Science’ exhibition last month, and have just gotten around to a bit of research:
And turning the corner, here are the rest of them:
Henry Edwards Huntington acquired much of his collection, now at San Marino, by buying up ready-made collections or even whole libraries. But some books he bought individually, including, in 1860s New York, an 1859 first edition of the Origin of Species in original cloth – for $22.79 (1). Checking Abebooks.com just now, I see you can pick up the same thing in the same city today for a cool $210,000 (Arader Gallery). Nice investment, Henry.
All the Origins at Huntington are different. Most of the variations are reprints of the early six editions published by John Murray between 1859 and 1872; and then there are all the various languages. The original six do vary in content though, with Darwin making material changes in response to readers’ comments.
Despite the title’s legendary status, the print runs of Murray’s Origin look modest by modern standards:
Scholars have argued over the Origin’s scientific content since, well, its origin – so it’s refreshing to find an analysis along a different tack, like Michele and Chris Kohler’s essay about the Origin of Species as a physical object (2).
The authors mention Huntington’s collection of Origins as one of the three largest, along with the Kohler Collection at the Natural History Museum London and the Thomas Fisher Library of the University of Toronto.
Their research also suggests that many more people may have read the first edition than the 1,250 figure suggests, with 500 copies going not to wealthy individuals (books like this were still a luxury for most people) but to Mudies Lending Library – the largest commercial library in the country. (btw, current Origin sales are a respectable 75,000 to 100,000 units per annum.)
There’s also a discussion on how the content was on occasion not so much lost, but subtley changed, in translation, as in the case of Heinrich Bronn’s first German edition.
The Kohlers’ analysis of price history shows a run-away escalation of first edition values in the 20th and 21st centuries: so from an average £36 in the mid-50’s, to still only £4000 in the 80’s, to a top price of £49,000 in 1999; that’s still a long way off the £100,000+ values being achieved today.
The collector demographic has necessarly changed in step: from pure scholars to business people; but perhaps those working in sci-tech related areas who want, and can afford, to be close to a piece of scientific history. Maybe that ownership requires a Henry Huntington income is a good thing – reflecting an increased awareness of the value of it’s intellectual message?
There again, maybe it’s all going the way of the art market, with rare books becoming a commodity currency. What do you think?
References
1. Henry Edwards Huntington, A Biography. James Ernest Thorpe, University of California Press, 1994
2. Essay by Michele and Chris Kohler in: The Cambridge Companion to the Origin of Species, Ed. Michael Ruse, Robert J Richards, New York, 2008 (Archive.org .txt version here)
The film Creation went on general release in the UK today, and as I’m just back from a lunchtime viewing, here are a few thoughts on the movie while it’s still fresh in my mind.
Finch with fig, California (Tim Jones)
To cut to the chase: enjoyable film, with great performances from Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin and Jennifer Connelly as his wife Emma. I’m giving it 4 out of 5 stars.
Very odd start though. I arrived at 12.10 for a 12.15 showing and had the theatre entirely to myself. By 12.30 ish, when the ads were over, the final audience had grown to six people. I know most folk can’t just knock off for the afternoon, but I found it surprising all the same; clearly not one for the pensioners.
I’ve made a point of not reading most of the Creation reviews already out there; just one or two quickly once over. So I’m relatively untainted but sufficiently informed to pick up on some of the obvious criticisms.
One of those criticisms has concerned the film’s factual accuracy. But as few viewers will have read the various biographies and letters, it strikes me that the emphasis should be more on identifying only serious material misrepresentations – and overall I don’t believe there are any (an exception is Huxley’s character – read on).
I was pleased to see certain events included: the failure to ‘civilise’ the Fuegan kids, the water cures, the influence of Hooker & Huxley, Darwin’s animosity with his local church, and Wallace’s letter.
At times though, I felt some incidents and issues had been slotted in because they had to be there – as if the director had a check list of ‘leave that out and the Darwin aficionados will play hell’. That’s how I felt about Huxley’s appearance anyhow. Arguably, Huxley came in to his own in the affairs of the Origin only after its publication – exactly the point at which this film ends. But the filmmakers have done T.H. an injustice all the same; the take-away impression of the man is just wrong. Richard Dawkins wasn’t overjoyed with the portrayal, and I can see why; the character is out of kilter with the historic record, and may as well have worn a ‘new atheist’ sash. (I find New Atheist a silly term; what is an old atheist? – Quiet?). Intellectually, the portrayal is overly one-dimensional and aggressive. Physically, Toby Jones is too short to portray a man whose height and presence in reality matched his intellect. They got Hooker’s whiskers down to a tee, so why not Huxley?
The core narrative revolves around Charles’s relationship with, and thoughts about, his daughter Annie. I don’t know the actor who played Annie, but she has an obvious future in Hollywood. We don’t get to know the other children anything like so closely as we do Annie; and the intellectual, as well as emotional, bond between Annie and Darwin is particularly well developed. There is something of the co-conspirator about Annie – a sense of allegiance lacking in Emma until a reluctant appearance in the final scenes.
The various ghost sequences have been criticised, but again, I just saw these as a device to illustrate Darwin’s pre-occupation. I don’t think he actually ran about the streets chasing his dead daughter (but please correct me if you know different).
All the themes in the movie ultimately link back to the Origin and what it stands for. One of the more human incarnations of that influence is the Emma – Charles relationship. Here I’d liked to have seen Emma’s philosophy explored a little more – even if the detailed story-line were credibly fabricated (biographers do this all the time). I guess we can never know someone’s innermost thoughts on life, the universe, and everything – no matter how many letters we read; but I felt the middle ground that our two protagonists must have found could have stood a little more exploration.
And never mind the movie, I find this theme of different fundamental philosophies within a relationship fascinating. I wonder how many couples today mirror Charles and Emma? This is a personal blog, so I can say that I would, for example, find it challenging at best to live with a partner who I knew was going to hell. That said, I have friends in atheist/Christian marriages who appear to get on just fine.
Which brings us to the big issue: is there a conflict between science and religion? Back to Huxley, I suspect the director intentionally set him up as the fall guy on this score; he can safely be hated for his total lack of religious accommodation early on in the film. Hooker does pop up now and again to reinforce the atheist line (the word is not used – nor is Huxley’s later derived ‘agnostic’), but never with Huxley’s brand of enthusiastic venom.
So what will a religious person make of this movie? After all, wasn’t it the possible religious reaction, and associated reduction in box-office $, that was behind the recent stink over US distribution (the film now has a US distributor).
There is nothing in Creation more offensive than a portrayal of the facts of evolution as they were understood in Darwin’s day. And Darwin’s encounter with Jenny the orangutan, which is beautifully represented in the film (well it’s not really acting is it) leaves little more to be said on the question of our own evolution. I’m not about to dive into a lengthy science-religion debate, suffice to say my position is that there are elements of religion as defined by some that are – on the evidence – incompatible with some definitions of science; and that the science-religion debate is an important one with practical consequences for us all.
God’s official in Creation, the local vicar, is played by Jeremy Northam. In one memorable scene, Northam tries to comfort Darwin in his torn anguish, which only sparks a sarcastic tirade from Darwin on the delights of the God-designed parasitic wasp larvae and the burrowing habits of intestinal worms. Northam’s sincerity and Bettany’s losing his temper are both convincing.
I live within an hour’s drive of the real Down House, and know it pretty well. While the house in the movie was not Down, the exterior feel – with large bay windows and patio doors opening to the garden captures the right flavour.
Down House - rear from the garden (photo Tim Jones)
The study has a similar feel to English Heritage’s reproduction of the real thing at Down – even down to Darwin’s screened-off privy. Likewise, the lounge and dining room, while never visible in wide-shot, have an attractive homely ambiance. The village road and church scenes are consistent with the feel of the real Down.
It’s not the end of the world, but a sandwalk scene was noticeable by its absence. The sandwalk for those who don’t know it is a gravelly path leading into the woods near Down House. I tend to imagine Darwin pacing down the sandwalk, under the trees or sheltering from the rain; to be sure – it’s a nice spot for thinking.
Interesting angle on the sandwalk (photo tks Sven klinge)
To wind up, this movie contains all the main factual, scientific, cultural, and emotional elements I associate with Darwin in this important period in his life. Issues around the compatibility of science and religion are met head on through illustration (if a little caricatured) rather than tedious debate, and we get to see the human, sensitive and fragile side of a scientist.
There is plenty here to enjoy in the theatre, but also much to take home and mull over – with your partner perhaps :-).
I suspect the run up to February 12th 2009 is going to be a bit like Christmas. A lunch here, a dinner there, an afternoon tea at Downe House, an evening at the Natural History Museum. Because February 12th 2009, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the Origin of Species, is a very important date. Well at least for some people.
So where are you going to party?
UK readers might consider joining the event being organised by the National Secular Society in London on Saturday 7th February. The NSS is moving its annual Secularist of the Year Award presentation to coincide with the Darwin 200th birthday celebrations – making one big party.
Cerebral?Soapy?
Three-course lunches are promised, plus entertainment that will include a reconstruction of the well known confrontation between Thomas Huxley and the Bishop of Oxford, ‘Soapy Sam’ Wilberforce, at the British Association in 1860. (Scholars amongst you must surely join this just to dissect the production’s ‘angle of spin’?) And as the NSS blurb states – you will be expected to take sides!
You don’t need to be a rabid secularist to join and, if you are a student, tickets are only £15 (£45 for normal people).
You’ll hardly need reminding that next year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and the 150th anniversary of his best known work – On The Origin of Species. It’s already a big deal: special events, new book editions, talks, tee-shirts, diaries, calendars, and commemorative mugs – the lot. And rightly so – however we might nuance the term, there would be no Darwinism without Darwin. But as the celebrations bubble up to a crescendo of reverence on February 12th, I wonder if the world will spare a thought for Darwin’s own origins, and particularly his illustrious grandfather – Erasmus (1731-1802). He’ll certainly be struggling for attention, so consider this a pre-emptive strike on behalf of The Other Darwin Genius.
Charles (1809-1882)
We automatically associate ‘Darwin’ with the name ‘Charles’. A mention of Erasmus in conversation brings blank looks, even from devotees of the definitive Charles. Genius twice in the same family – impossible! And if the old fellow had some notoriety in his day, surely it must pale beside that of his grandson.Yet Erasmus is not to be compared to Charles in any competitive sense. Their skills, inclinations, personality, temperament, and achievements were very different. It was their shared inquisitiveness and intellectual energy that destined each to leave a lasting imprint on the world. We all know about Charles’s lasting imprint, but few are aware that Erasmus was:
Erasmus (1809-1882)
The greatest physician of his time
An original and popular poet
A respected scientist and inventor
A key player and catalyst in the industrial revolution
His life has been richly documented by physicist Desmond King-Hele, whose analysis reveals a breathtaking range of interests, involvements and achievements. Not associated with one single big theory or event, Erasmus confuses our conception of the traditional achiever. Charles by contrast is easy – well and truly Mr Evolution. So what makes Erasmus so appealing?
His lifelong profession was medicine. Widely recognised in England as the top doctor of his day, he famously declined to be King George III’s personal physician. (Had he accepted of course, George’s porphyria would have quickly cleared up, the King’s eye would have stayed on the political ball, and America would still be ours – yippee! Well, O.K. – maybe not; Erasmus’s sympathies actually tended towards the pro-revolutionary.) He chose rather to spread his benefaction widely, making house calls to ordinary folk in all weathers and treating the poor for free.
Erasmus’s medical knowledge is captured in the 1796 ZOONOMIA. At 5kg, the big and heavy first edition makes fascinating reading. Some of the 18th century cures sound worse than the diseases, but while Erasmus’s use of the blood-letting lancet for physical conditions may have been typical, his approach to mental disease was ahead of its time. Lunatics in his care could expect compassion instead of the more familiar beating.
Zoonomia Vol II was a catalogue of disease (Tim Jones private collection)
Charles inherited his knack for ruffling religious feathers from his grandfather, who in Zoonomia classified religion as a mental disease – a ‘Desease of Volition’. Here he dismisses it along with other fantasies in a discussion on Credulitas, or Credulity. To get a flavour of the language and its appearance, the reader is invited to struggle through this photocopy of the original text:
[text continues]………
In regard to religious matters, there is an intellectual cowardice instilled in the minds of the people from their infancy; which prevents their inquiry: credulity is made an indispensible virtue; to inquire or exert their reason in religious matters is denounced as sinful; and in the catholic church is punished with more severe penances than moral crimes…
For each desease, Darwin offers a cure. Headed ‘M.M.’ for Materia Medica, his wise council on credulity reads:
M.M. The method of cure is to increase our knowledge of the laws of nature, and our habit of comparing whatever ideas are presented to us with those known laws, and thus to counteract the fallacies or our senses, to emancipate ourselves from the false impressions which we have imbibed in our infancy, and to set the faculty of reason above that of imagination.
Rational thinking and appeal to scientific method shine through – not surprising given the very interesting people Erasmus was mixing with: James Watt and Matthew Boulton of steam engine fame, Josiah Wedgwood of pottery fame, the Scottish chemist James Kier, and the politically animated chemist and co-discoverer of oxygen Joseph Priestley.
Statue of Boulton, Watt, and Murdoch in Birmingham, UK (Photo: Tim Jones)
With Erasmus’s support, Wedgwood got England’s first canal built, while his friendship and technical exchanges with Watt and Boulton catalysed the steam age. Together known as the Lunar Men, (so called because they travelled to monthly meetings assisted by moonlight) this group drove the industrial revolution and gave us the roots of our technological world.
A pioneering scientist and engineer in his own right, Erasmus is unsung in many fields. He discovered ‘Charles Gas Law’ before Charles -who claimed it 24 years later, glimpsed partial pressures ahead of Dalton, and explained how clouds form. His musings appear almost casually in a letter to Boulton, where we first learn that his plans for weather forecasting will be enhanced by the accuracy of John Harrison’s new clock – that is Harrison of longitude fame (this single letter is astonishing in the icons it embraces), then:
Erasmus explained cloud formation
I am extremely impatient for this Play-Thing! [Harrison’s clock] as I intend to fortell every Shower by it, and make great medical discovery as far as relates to the specific Gravity of Air: and from the Quantity of Vapor. Thus the Specific Gravity of the Air, should be as the Absolute Gravity (shew’d by the Barometer) and as the Heat (shew’d by Boulton’s Thermometer). Now if it is not always found as these two (that is as one and inversely as the other) then the deviations at different Times must be as the Quantity of dissolved Vapour in the Air.
Elsewhere in the same letter, having playfully struck Boulton off as a “plodding man of Business” he proceeds to bribe him with wine on the condition he glass-blows one of the empties into a specific form required for his (Darwin’s) researches.
The first reference to the mechanism for cloud formation comes in a 1784 letter to Josiah Wedgwood; with what amounts to a description of the universal law of adiabatic expansion of gases, which he later published in a formal journal.
Evolution is also discussed in Zoonomia and The Temple of Nature, also by by Erasmus. His coat of arms comprised three scallop shells with the telling motto E conchis omnia – ‘everything from shells’, reflecting his belief that all life started from sea creatures. Unfortunately, the device was not subtle enough to evade the local clergy, leaving Erasmus force-put to paint it out and thereby keep the peace (it remained on his bookplate). Erasmus’s gift for marrying art with science matured in his narrative poem The Botanic Garden, which brought him literary fame and the respect of influential friends like the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, both of whom record him as an important influence on their work.
Erasmus was clever but not boring. A true man of the Enlightenment, he took all his pleasures seriously. Shunning alcohol, he preferred to act on his conviction that sugar and cream were the healthiest of foods, consuming both in quantity. He had a semi-circular profile carved in his dining table to accommodate the girth of his indulgence. Always amorously inclined, his successful bid for the hand of the young socialite Elizabeth Pole, whilst in the disrepair of his fifties, is intriguing – not to say impressive, as are his liberal reproductive powers, evidenced by 14 children including two illegitimacies.
And so it goes on: from speaking machines to steam turbines, from educational reform to carriage design, from the moon’s origin to the formation of coal; in all these areas and many more, Erasmus made a valuable and original contribution to knowledge. For me though, it is the combination of The Other Darwin Genius’s bon-viveur attitude, innovatory energy, rationality, compassion, and his measured disrespect for authority, convention and the status quo, that makes him (and I know this is blasphemy) the more interesting Darwin. Spare him a thought on February 12th.
Other Links Erasmusdarwin.org – custodians of his memory and former home in Litchfield.
This post is for anyone who has ever looked through an old book and wondered who its previous owners were.
The intrigue starts with the discovery of a name inside the front cover, or an elegant family bookplate, or perhaps some obscure ephemera tucked in amongst the pages. These kinds of evidence, along with the book’s theme, content, and price, can tell a lot about the previous owner – who may turn out to be more interesting than the book itself. Once the purview of bibliofiles and librarians, provenance research is now accessible to anyone; in a Google world we can all be book detectives.
Science books are no exception, as I discovered with three of my own. The books are connected in so far as they either paved the way for, or hammered home, the idea of evolution in the Victorian mind.
Robert Chambers House in Edinburgh (Photo:Thanks S.Klinge)
Mid-nineteenth century editions such as these would have been expensive items, objects of desire for the professional or aspiring man of business. These sort of people were often successful in their own right and, along with their descendents, are likely to have left their mark on the world. To the owners…….
The Worthington family Vestiges (Photo:Tim Jones)
The first page of this Vestiges tells us the book has spent at least three generations with the Worthington family. The first custodian ‘J.H.’ was probably the first owner of this 1845 fouth edition. The book passed next to ‘W.B.’ in 1915, and finally to Edgar Barton Worthington as a christmas gift in 1931. Based on one evening’s Googling, the clearest picture emerges around the last owner – E.B.W. As is doubtless common knowledge to those who share the subject’s profession and have a knowledge of its history, Dr Edgar Barton Worthington was a biologist and zoologist. A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, EBW worked extensively in Africa to become theNile expert, was a personal friend of paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey (of human ancestor artifact fame), and corresponded with Liddell Hart. From 1962, he managed the 10 year International Biological Programme (IBP), the first attempt to manage rationally the world’s reserves in the face of a changing environment and rising population – sounds familiar. The death of EBW in 2001, aged 96, signaled the end of 150 years of Worthington custodianship for this Vestiges. Further research on W.B. and J.H. will have to wait for another evening.
Thomas William Keates's Explanations (Photo:Tim Jones)
The most likely candidate owner of Explanations is the chemist Thomas William Keates. Thomas William lived at Chatham Place in Blackfriars, London, and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Chemical Society in 1852. He may not have set the sky on fire, but he did develop an improved method for turpentine distillation.
The Origin of John S Swann (Photo:Tim Jones)
When the Origin of Species was published in 1859, the 37 year old John S Swann was working as a lawyer in Charleston, West Virginia. When the fourth edition was printed in 1866, Swann purchased his own copy – this one.
While Darwin was working up revised editions of the Origin of Species in the gentle surroundings of Downe in Kent, Swann was languishing in a Civil War prison. Indeed, one of Captain Swann’s two claims to fame is his survival, and later documentation, of his incarceration at Fort Delaware. Swann’s second notable achievement is the geological survey and topographical map he made of the Kanawha Coalfields in West Virginia; the first of its kind and work he pursued post-civil war – his legal career killed by his Confederate past. (Ironically, Kanawha county was embroiled in a modern day book banning controversy in 1974.)
I have no record of how or when Swann obtained his Origin. But, if it was bought on publication, two years after his release, it is likely the book was with him the twenty years he spent cogitating and planning his war memoirs – a period of introspection and hesitation reminiscent of Darwin’s own.
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And turning the corner, here are the rest of them:
Henry Edwards Huntington acquired much of his collection, now at San Marino, by buying up ready-made collections or even whole libraries. But some books he bought individually, including, in 1860s New York, an 1859 first edition of the Origin of Species in original cloth – for $22.79 (1). Checking Abebooks.com just now, I see you can pick up the same thing in the same city today for a cool $210,000 (Arader Gallery). Nice investment, Henry.
