The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~22,700 words · 108 passages
Cite this work
- APACharles Darwin. (n.d.). The Autobiography of Charles Darwin. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-darwin/the-autobiography-of-charles-darwin
- MLACharles Darwin. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-darwin/the-autobiography-of-charles-darwin.
- ChicagoCharles Darwin. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/charles-darwin/the-autobiography-of-charles-darwin.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
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.
know not. I often became quite absorbed, and once, whilst returning to school on the summit of the old fortifications round Shrewsbury, which had been converted into a public foot-path with no parapet on one side, I walked off and fell to the ground, but the height was only seven or eight feet. Nevertheless the number of thoughts which passed through my mind during this very short, but sudden and wholly unexpected fall, was astonishing, and seem hardly compatible with what physiologists have, I believe, proved about each thought requiring quite an appreciable amount of time. Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler’s school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, except a little ancient geography and history. The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank. During my whole life I have been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial attention was paid to verse-making, and this I could never do well. I had many friends, and got together a good collection of old verses, which by patching together, sometimes aided by other boys, I could work into any subject. Much attention was paid to learning by heart the lessons of the previous day; this I could effect with great facility, learning forty or fifty lines of Virgil or Homer, whilst I was in morning chapel; but this exercise was utterly useless, for every verse was forgotten in forty-eight hours. I was not idle, and with the exception of versification, generally worked conscientiously at my classics, not using cribs. The sole pleasure I ever received from such studies, was from some of the odes of Horace, which I admired greatly. When I left the school I was for my age neither high nor low in it; and I believe that I was considered by all my masters and by my father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect.…