Charles Darwin (1809-1882).

Autograph letter signed (‘Charles Darwin’) to [Henry Nottidge] Moseley, Down, Beckenham, Kent, 20 January 1879.

One page, 203 x 125mm, bifolium, headed notepaper. Provenance: by descent.

A heartfelt vote of thanks for Moseley’s dedication. Darwin has just received the book and ‘I declare that never in my life have I seen a Dedication which I admired so much. Of course I am not a fair judge, but I hope that I speak dispassionately, though you have touched me in my very tenderest point, by saying that my old Journal mainly gave you the wish to travel as a naturalist’. He will begin reading the book immediately.

The dedication in question, which opened Moseley’s 1879 Notes by a Naturalist on the Challenger, ran as follows: ‘To Charles Darwin, Esquire, LL.D., F.R.S., etc., from the study of whose "Journal of Researches" I mainly derived my desire to travel round the world; to the development of whose theory I owe the principal pleasures and interests of my life, and who has personally given me much kindly encouragements in the prosecution of my studies, this book is, by permission, gratefully dedicated’.

Darwin Correspondence Project 11873

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