The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~22,700 words · 108 passages
Cite this work
- APACharles Darwin. (n.d.). The Autobiography of Charles Darwin. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-darwin/the-autobiography-of-charles-darwin
- MLACharles Darwin. "The Autobiography of Charles Darwin." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-darwin/the-autobiography-of-charles-darwin.
- ChicagoCharles Darwin. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-darwin/the-autobiography-of-charles-darwin.
What it is about
The text Darwin wrote in 1876 for his children, with no thought of publishing it, about his own life and his own character.
Context and history
It is short and very unsolemn: Darwin describes himself as a mediocre boy at school, gives the 'Beagle' as the thing that settled everything, and takes stock of his working habits with a frankness never seen in his books. There is the famous complaint of having lost his taste for poetry and music by turning his mind into a machine for grinding facts, which he himself regards as a loss and a moral injury. And there are the pages on religion, where he tells how he gradually stopped believing, slowly and without anguish, and how the death of his daughter Annie counted in it. Those pages were cut by his widow from the 1887 edition; they could only be read entire in 1958, when his granddaughter Nora Barlow published the complete text. It is worth checking which of the two versions one is reading.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
FROM MY MARRIAGE, JANUARY 29, 1839, AND RESIDENCE IN UPPER GOWER STREET, TO OUR LEAVING LONDON AND SETTLING AT DOWN, SEPTEMBER 14, 1842. RESIDENCE AT DOWN FROM SEPTEMBER 14, 1842, TO THE PRESENT TIME, 1876. MY SEVERAL PUBLICATIONS. WRITTEN MAY 1ST, 1881. [My father’s autobiographical recollections, given in the present chapter, were written for his children,—and written without any thought that they would ever be published. To many this may seem an impossibility; but those who knew my father will understand how it was not only possible, but natural. The autobiography bears the heading, ‘Recollections of the Development of my Mind and Character,’ and end with the following note:—“Aug. 3, 1876. This sketch of my life was begun about May 28th at Hopedene (Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood’s house in Surrey.), and since then I have written for nearly an hour on most afternoons.” It will easily be understood that, in a narrative of a personal and intimate kind written for his wife and children, passages should occur which must here be omitted; and I have not thought it necessary to indicate where such omissions are made. It has been found necessary to make a few corrections of obvious verbal slips, but the number of such alterations has been kept down to the minimum.—F.D.] A German Editor having written to me for an account of the development of my mind and character with some sketch of my autobiography, I have thought that the attempt would amuse me, and might possibly interest my children or their children. I know that it would have interested me greatly to have read even so short and dull a sketch of the mind of my grandfather, written b