Royal honours for Darwin Correspondence Project
30 April 2003
A project to publish the definitive edition of Charles Darwin's letters has been awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education.
The Darwin Correspondence Project, which was set up in 1974, involves researchers in both the UK and the US. The UK staff, who are funded by the Wellcome Trust, are based in Cambridge University Library, which houses 9000 of the Darwin letters.
Written in Darwin's Victorian script, and sometimes in shorthand, the letters reflect the social and moral attitudes of Victorian society, as well as revealing Darwin's intellectual development.
The Trust has contributed over £470 000 to the project, which is expected to produce a massive 30 volumes of letters by 2011.
The Queen's Anniversary Prize was awarded in recognition of the outstanding contribution the project has made to the intellectual, economic, cultural and social life of the nation.
See also
- Knowing Darwin (News on the second volume of Janet Browne's epic biography of Charles Darwin)
External links
- Darwin Correspondence Project at the University Library, Cambridge