From 1965–1968, I held an Agricultural Research Council Research Fellowship at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Later in 1981, when I was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge and renewed my contacts with Christ’s College, my friend and colleague David Coombe, a Fellow of Christ’s College, informed me that a collection of letters of Charles Darwin had just been - covered in the Library storeroom, underneath the College. I had always maintained an interest in Charles Darwin, from the early age of thirteen, when I had rst read his books, with I might say some dif culty! This collection was the 155 letters of Charles Darwin to his second cousin William Darwin Fox, which had been given in trust to the College, in 1909, by members of the Fox family at the time of the Darwin Centenary celebrations. I was allowed access to these 155 letters and at that time made my own tr- scriptions. It seemed to me that this was a magni cent account of the lives of two naturalists of the nineteenth century, starting at the time that they were at Christ’s together, in 1828, and going to 1880 when W D Fox died – just two years short of the death of Charles Darwin in 1882. Of course this valuable resource had not gone unnoticed before. Darwin’s son, Francis Darwin had been given the letters in the 1880s, when he was preparing his Life and Letters of Charles Darwin in 3 volumes.
This book provides new factual material on Charles Darwin, following many years of research into Darwin’s relationship to his cousin William Darwin Fox. It is a biographical and historical account of the letters exchanged by these two men and the diaries of W D Fox have never been accessed before. The relationship between Darwin and Fox has been acknowledged as a major biographical source on Darwin. Here the life of Fox is carefully pieced together and compared and contrasted with that of Darwin. Since Darwin and Fox were undergraduates together at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and corresponded with each other for the rest of their lives, dying within two years of each other, the diaries allow us a vivid insight into the unique relationship of these two naturalists and family friends. Both were studying to be clergymen of the Church of England, when Darwin was offered a place on The Beagle. Thereafter their lives diverged, as Fox became the country parson that Darwin might have been. Never the less, Fox supplied many facts to Darwin, which were used in the "Origin of Species" and later books.The views and opinions exchanged between these two men greatly enlarge our appreciation of the life and contribution of Charles Darwin at a profoundly personal level.
