Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin's wife's diaries head online

Emma Wedgwood's writing shows evolution of Darwin's mystery illness

Matt Chapman

Personal diaries written by Charles Darwin's wife have been placed online by scholars at Cambridge University

Emma Wedgwood, Charles Darwin's wife and cousin, wrote about the ordinary life the couple enjoyed despite the controversy surrounding her husband's ideas on evolution.

Advertisement

The collection includes 60 diaries that stretch to 6,000 pages in total, covering the years 1824, 1833-4, 1839-45 and 1848-96.

They include Emma's life as a 16 year-old girl and the run-up to her death at the age of 88 in 1896.

Charles's health is commented on frequently as he battled a mystery disease that gave him blackouts and made him retch.

Emma also uses a number of codes within the diaries, including marking her menstruation periods with a large X.

However, the perfunctory writing style is summed up by Emma's note on the date of Charles's death, with the entry simply reading 'Fatal attack at 12'.

Dr John van Wyhe, the project's director at Cambridge University, said that the diaries were the latest part of an expanding online collection based on Darwin's work. 

"As vast as the collection now is, there is much still to come before 2009, the bicentenary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species," he said.

Forthcoming materials include further editions and translations, and images of the majority of the Darwin Archive at Cambridge University Library.

  • Have your say
  • Send to a friend
  • Print
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • Share

Tags:

Do you agree?

Further reading

Glastonbury Festival

Glastonbury registration heads online

Photos added to tickets in bid to thwart touts

French put UFO archives online

ET, téléphoner chez toi

Ancient passenger manifests to float online

National Archives releases passenger lists to help genealogy searches

Historic phone book archive goes online

BT and Ancestry.co.uk put 100 years of phone books on the web

Related whitepapers

Related jobs

Most watched

Social networking

Summit: How businesses should manage their brands online

In part one of V3.co.uk's interview with Dirk Singer, he dicusses social media monitoring strategies

RIM discusses new developer tools

Blackberry exec on the latest offerings for programmers

Analysis and Reports

Remote access - Three steps to getting connected

3.4 million UK professionals now work from home – is your company equipped?

Cost benefits of a global collaboration network

This white paper is a must read for organisations looking for evidence of the bottom-line benefits of high-definition video and voice communications

Poll

Impact of Information Overload poll

Impact of Information Overload poll

What is the biggest problem your firm faces as a result of the data explosion?

View poll results

Advertisement

White paper library

Keep up to date with the latest products, services and technologies from the world's leading IT companies; IThound.com brings you over 6,000 white papers, case studies and analyst reports.

Advertisement

Newsletter signup

Sign up for our range of FREE newsletters:

Existing User

Newsletter user login:

Enter email address to edit your newsletter preferences

Job of the week

Search thousands of IT jobs :

Search thousands of IT jobs:

Advanced search

Hiring now on ComputingCareers:

Related IT jobs

Search thousands of IT jobs :

Search thousands of IT jobs:

Advanced search

Advertisement

Spotlight

Alcatel-Lucent logo

Summit: Networks swamped by information overload

Alcatel-Lucent's Neal Tilley talks about how enterprises and carriers can...

EU flag

Breach notification laws get green light

Privacy rights strengthened in Europe

Richard Thomas

Summit: Richard Thomas advises on handling the data deluge

Former Information Commissioner speaks out on government databases and data...

oracle sun

War of words escalates between EU and Oracle

Commission comes out fighting after criticism from Oracle and Washington

Primary Navigation