Charles Darwin had close to 1500 books in his library. Now, thanks to the Biodiversity Heritage Library, one can digitally peruse over 400 of the books contained therein, including over 300 of the most heavily annotated.
The Charles Darwin’s Library project is “a digital edition and virtual reconstruction of the surviving books owned by Charles Darwin.”
“a miserable book – all words, words, words.” Annotation in Volume 1 of Histoire naturelle générale des règnes organiques by Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, Isidore, 1854.
“The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a consortium of 12 natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global “biodiversity commons.”
A transcription pane accompanies each annotated page providing a detailed accounting of the annotation. There is also a comprehensive search feature that allows you to search the books in Darwin’s library as well as the annotations themselves.
The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online – the go-to online source for Darwin material
Previously on In the Stacks:
The National Archives