Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Marriage, First child
A child's writing case. The pale yellow ribbon curled inside is stitched with small glass beads. The goose-feather quills have dried ink on their tips, and the sealing wax has been melted over a candle flame.

Chapter 1: Part 2
But he could joke about the difficulties she would have. After spending a morning with his friend, the geologist Charles Lyell, he wrote to her: 'I was quite ashamed of myself today; for we talked for half an hour unsophisticated geology

Chapter 1: Part 3
Charles might also have heard, or thought he heard, or sensed, cries from the operating theatre in the hospital across the road. The surgeon, Robert Liston, had been a well-known figure at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh when Charles studied medicine

In a chest of drawers bequeathed by his grandmother, author Randal Keynes discovered the writing case of Charles Darwin's beloved daughter Annie, who died at the age of ten. He also found the notes Darwin kept throughout Annie's illness, the eulogy he delivered at her funeral and provocative new insights into Darwin's views on nature, evolution, and the human condition.

Randal Keynes is a great-great grandson of Charles Darwin. He is also a descendant of the economist John Maynard Keynes..

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