DARWIN | autograph letter signed, declining to contribute to a periodical, 1881

DARWIN, CHARLES

AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED, TO "MY DEAR SIR"

thanking him for his note, but declining to contribute to a periodical ("...Writing is so laborious to me & loses so much time, that during many years I have resolved never to write in periodicals..."), blue ink, 2 pages, 8vo, headed mourning stationery of Down House, Kent, 5 October 1881

A typically polite letter from the elderly Darwin. He was still engaged in important scientific work - his final book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, was published later in October 1881, but he was suffering from angina and was keen to conserve his limited energies for the experimental work that was closest to his heart.

PROVENANCE:

Sotheby's, London, 19 July 1994, lot 516

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