Thousands of papers written by Charles Darwin can now be accessed on the Internet at the Darwin Online website, it has been reported. This includes the first draft of his Origin of Species. The historic texts were formerly available only to scholars at Cambridge University Library.
The collection, totaling nearly 20,000 items in nearly 90,000 images, comprises thousands of notes and drafts. These include material from the voyage of HMS Beagle, complete with his musings on Galapagos fauna and his first recorded doubts about the permanence of species. Also, it contains photographs of Darwin and his family, newspaper clippings, reviews of his books, boyhood notes on birds, Emma Darwin's recipe book, proofs of Origin of Species, caricatures and obituaries.
A searchable electronic catalogue has been created to help users navigate the collection, which is projected as one of the most important collections of primary materials in the history of science.
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