viii Preface 



a long illness my husband arranged, dated, and annotated 

 the whole series, a task which required the same sort of 

 minute care and endless patience as the piecing out of a 

 gigantic puzzle. 



He read aloud to me every one of the hundreds of letters, 

 and we discussed together what was worth preserving. 

 In the earlier chapters most of the notes are written by 

 him. Some of these may appear superfluous, but it should 

 be remembered that his object was to make the book 

 interesting to the younger members of the Darwin family. 



Many omissions are made without putting any sign that 

 this has been done, and neither the punctuation nor the 

 spelling has been rigidly followed. 



The pedigrees of the Allen, Wedgwood, and Darwin 

 families, and a list of the principal characters, are given for 

 convenience of reference at the beginning of each volume. 



I have received valuable help, criticism, and encourage- 

 ment from various friends, and especially from Professor 

 A. V. Dicey, Miss M. J. Shaen, my brother Francis, and my 

 niece Mrs F. M. Cornford. To the late Sir John Simon I 

 owe the first idea of this book. Up to the day of his 

 death, in July, 1904, he never ceased to interest himself in 

 its progress. He read the whole in the typewritten copy 

 and followed the proofs as they came from the press. 



I wish to thank Mr John Murray for kindly allowing me 

 to give several of the illustrations from More Letters of 

 Charles Darwin ; Messrs Elliott and Fry for their permis- 

 sion to make use of the fine portrait of my father in the 

 second volume of that work, and Messrs Barraud for the 

 same permission with regard to their portrait of my 

 mother ; Messrs Maull and Fox for allowing me to reproduce 

 an early photograph of my mother ; and Mr Prescott Row, 

 the Editor of the Homeland Handbook Association, and Mr 

 G. W. Smith for their kind permission to make use of 

 Mr Smith's photograph of Down Village. 



