Revision of Introduction from Sat, 2012-07-21 15:35

Wallace's flying frog. From a watercolour painted by Wallace in Sarawak.Alfred Russel Wallace OM, LLD, DCL, FRS, FLS was one of the 19th century's most remarkable polymaths. His link to Charles Darwin as the co-discoverer in 1858 of evolution by natural selection would alone have secured his place in history, but he went on to make other significant contributions, not only to biology, but to subjects as far-ranging as glaciology, land reform, anthropology, ethnography, epidemiology, and astrobiology. His pioneering work on evolutionary biogeography has led to him becoming recognized as the ‘father’ of the subject. Beyond this, Wallace is regarded as the pre-eminent collector and field biologist of tropical regions of the 19th century and his book The Malay Archipelago (which was Joseph Conrad’s favorite bedside reading) is one of the most celebrated travel writings of that century and has never been out of print. Add to the above that Wallace was deeply committed to, and a vocal supporter of, spiritualism, socialism, and the rights of the ordinary person, it quickly becomes apparent that he was a man with an extraordinary breadth of interests who was actively engaged with many of the big questions and important issues of his day.

Signed cabinet card of Wallace in 1889. Copyright The Natural History Museum & Fred EdwardsDuring Wallace's lifetime he was widely credited as being the co-discoverer of the principle of evolution by natural selection and he was duly honored for his role in its discovery by being awarded the Darwin–Wallace and Linnean Gold Medals of the Linnean Society of London; the Copley, Darwin and Royal Medals of the Royal Society (Britain's premier scientific body); and the Order of Merit (awarded by the ruling Monarch as the highest civilian honor of Great Britain). Wallace was highly regarded by his contemporaries and he met and corresponded with many of the leading figures in science, politics and literature both in Europe and North America. During his ten month lecture tour of the United States of America and Canada in 1886 and 1887, his company was sought after by the principal scientists and writers of the day and President Cleveland himself gave Wallace a tour of the White House.

By the time of his death in 1913 Wallace was the world’s most famous contemporary scientist. Large numbers of obituary notices appeared in newspapers and other publications worldwide which paid tribute to him. The Daily Mirror (London) commented on 8 November 1913 that “Science has lost its 'grand old man' Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the greatest of all modern scientists--co-originator with Charles Darwin of the theory of natural selection--died yesterday at his home..." Current Opinion (New York) summed up these tributes in January 1914 by stating that "Only a great ruler could have been accorded by the press of the world any such elaborate obituary recognition as was evoked by the death of Alfred Russel Wallace..."

After Wallace's death his intellectual legacy was soon overshadowed by Darwin’s for a variety of complex reasons and this remained the case for many decades. In recent years, however, interest in Wallace has been steadily increasing, as indicated, for example, by the fact that nine biographies have appeared since the year 2000 - more than doubling the number published since his death. Wallace is now becoming the focal point for researches in a range of disciplines, but work on him is often frustrated by the difficulty of obtaining copies or transcripts of his correspondence. His letters contain much information which is absent from his published works: ranging from details of interest to biographers attempting to document his life, to information useful to biologists studying the vast number of important natural history specimens he collected during his travels around the Malay Archipelago (Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia). A list of his correspondents reads like a “who’s who” of 19th century science and society and includes Charles Darwin, Wallace's golden birdwing butterfly, discovered by him in Indonesia.Thomas Henry Huxley, Charles Lyell, Joseph Dalton Hooker, Henry Walter Bates, Richard Spruce, Francis Galton, Sir William Thiselton-Dyer, William Henry Fox Talbot, Herbert Spencer, Charles Kingsley, Lord Morley and Gertrude Jekyll, amongst others. Unfortunately, however, Wallace's correspondence is scattered amongst the libraries of c. 100 institutions in several countries and only a very small proportion of it has ever been published. Most of the letters which have been are contained in Wallace's 1905 autobiography My Life; A Record of Events and Opinions and Marchant's 1916 book Alfred Russel Wallace; Letters and Reminiscences, but unfortunately these transcripts contain many errors and even important omissions of text.

What is needed then is a comprehensive publicly accessible collection of Wallace’s correspondence. Publishing this in printed form would be a slow and very costly process so an online archive is the obvious choice. This is exactly what the Wallace Correspondence Project aims to provide.

Collating Wallace’s letters and making them freely available through a user-friendly portal on the Internet will mark a huge advance in Wallace studies. Such an archive is likely to generate a surge of scholarly work on all aspects of Wallace’s life and work. It will be an important resource for students of the history of science, cultural studies and 19th century society, and for biologists and for scholars interested in that generation of scientists who were at the centre of the debate on evolution. For many of those scientists the theory of natural selection raised major contradictions in their own systems of belief. Access to the correspondence between these men would advance the understanding of the broader debate that existed while revealing some of the personal conflicts that individuals experienced.

Long-armed chafer beetle collected by Wallace in Indonesia.Making high quality digitized images of the Wallace letters available will also help preserve these often fragile documents. It will reduce to a minimum any handling whilst allowing researchers to view the originals. It will also provide a view of the spatial layout of the page, the color and size of the paper, the type of ink, and even the legibility of handwriting that are all insightful components of the correspondence that are lost if one does not have access to the original physical artifact.

 

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