The First Charles Darwin Biography

The Autobiography

Introduction

Online Biology Dictionary

Edited by Eugene M. McCarthy, PhD

The first and, in certain ways, the best Charles Darwin biography was written by Darwin himself. It's offered here with added illustrations, explanatory notes, and links to fill out the story. Notes are inserted at the bottom of each page or, more often, into the text itself (in square brackets). The added information should make it easier for most readers to follow Darwin's commentary.

Charles Darwin Biography

Cambridge →

Charles Darwin Biography

For those who are tired of the unrelenting adulation found in the lives of Darwin produced by other writers, the autobiography will come as something of a relief — Unlike other biographers, Darwin is actually willing to criticize himself from time to time. This account also has the large advantage of being told from the standpoint of what Darwin himself saw as significant in his life.

First published in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (Francis Darwin, ed., 1887. London: John Murray), this biography was written in 1876, except for the addendum, written in 1881. The first page of the original is dated May 31st, 1876, and bears the title Recollections of the Development of my Mind and Character. This short biography of Charles Darwin — a summary of his life expressed in his own words — reads as follows:

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 a short and dull a sketch of the mind of my grandfather [Dr. Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), a free-thinking atheist, who died before Charles was born], written by himself, and what he thought and did, and how he worked. I have attempted to write the following account of myself, as if I were a dead man in another world looking back at my own life. Nor have I found this difficult, for life is nearly over with me [Darwin died April 18th, 1882]. I have taken no pains about my style of writing. [The autobiography ends with the following note: "Aug. 3, 1876. This sketch of my life was begun about May 28th at Hopedene,¹ and since then I have written for nearly an hour on most afternoons."]

Shropshire's
Location

Cambridge →

I was born at Shrewsbury [in Shropshire, which lies in western England and borders on northern Wales] February 12th, 1809, and my earliest recollection goes back only to when I was a few months over four years old, when we went to near Abergele [a resort town on the north coast of Wales] for sea-bathing, and I recollect some events and places there with some little distinctness.

Susannah Darwin
(1765–1817)

My mother [Susannah Darwin, daughter of the wealthy industrialist Josiah Wedgwood I] died in July, 1817 [facts point to a gastrointestinal illness, probably a cancer], when I was a little over eight years old, and it is odd that I can remember hardly anything about her except her deathbed, her black velvet gown, and her curiously constructed work-table. In the spring of this same year I was sent to a day-school [run by Reverend George Case, minister of the local Unitarian Chapel, which Mrs. Darwin had regularly attended with the young Charles and the rest of her children ²] in Shrewsbury, where I stayed a year. [Charles Darwin's father, Dr. Robert Waring Darwin (1766–1848), was a wealthy physician.³ His own father, Erasmus, had been the friend of Charles' other grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood. This connection led to the marriage of Charles' parents. As Desmond and Moore (1991, p. 11) comment, "Marriage for the Darwins, like everything else, was managed by old Erasmus…they wed in April, 1796, a year after Josiah's death." With her, Susannah brought a £25,000 inheritance. At the time, a British laborer made about 10 shillings a week. Today, a laborer in the U.S. makes around $400 in the same period of time, so Susannah Darwin's inheritance was the equivalent of about $20,000,000 today.]

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Charles Darwin Biography - Contents:

Section I: Introduction

Section II: Early School Years >>

Section III: Edinburgh >>

Section IV: Cambridge >>

Section V: Voyage of the Beagle >>

Section VI: Return to England, Marriage, Lyell >>

Section VII: Life at Down (1842-1876) >>

Section VIII: Addendum (written in 1881) >>

Basic Facts about Charles Darwin >>

Notes:

1. Hopedene was Hensleigh Wedgwood's house in Surrey.
2. Robert Darwin had also gone to the Unitarian Chapel as a little boy, but no longer attended. The Unitarian Church was so called because its members believed in a single god — they denied the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus. It was the religion of the Wedgwood side of the family. Charles was christened in, and meant to belong to, the Church of England. His grandfather, Erasmus, was a caustic free-thinking atheist, who had at least two illegitimate children and spoke of Unitarianism as a "featherbed to catch a falling Christian."
3.Of his father, Charles later wrote (Life and Letters), "He was about 6 feet 2 inches in height, with broad shoulders, and very corpulent, so that he was the largest man whom I ever saw. When he last weighed himself, he was 24 stone [324 lbs], but afterwards increased much in weight. His chief mental characteristics were his powers of observation and his sympathy, neither of which have I ever seen exceeded or even equalled."

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