Rare Darwin Manuscript Goes Digital

Monday, December 07 10:22 am

When Charles Darwin labored over word choice while writing On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, he could not have known that one day absolutely anyone could peer over his shoulder to see him pen the words, “difficulty of highly perfect organs.”

But now, Darwin’s scientific drafts, notes, and texts are going online. Anyone can now read 34 of the 36 known and located draft leaves of On the Origin, gathered together for the first time since Darwin wrote this seminal book. These rare documents are a tiny portion of the 10,000 high-quality images that will become part of the Darwin Manuscripts Project, a collaboration between the American Museum of Natural History, Cambridge University Library, and the Biodiversity Heritage Library (Natural History Museum in London).

“These rare manuscript leaves from On the Origin are the crown jewels of our project and show Darwin in the process of writing,” says David Kohn, Director and General Editor of the Project. “I’ve sat in the Cambridge University Library since 1974, touching these documents, but this is the first time that anyone can do this—online, in this quantity, and with this quality.”