There is an extensive secondary literature on Darwin's life and work. Here are some suggested titles that focus Darwin’s correspondence, as well as scientific correspondence and letter-writing more generally.
Collections of Darwin’s letters
- Barlow, N., ed. 1958. The autobiography of Charles Darwin. London: Collins.
- Burkhardt, F., et al., eds. 1985– The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press
- Burkhardt, F., ed. 2008. Charles Darwin: the Beagle letters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Burkhardt, F., et al., eds. 2008. Evolution: selected letters of Charles Darwin 1860–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Burkhardt, F., ed. 2008. Origins: selected letters of Charles Darwin, 1822–1859. Anniversary edition. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
- Darwin, F., ed. 1887 The life and letters of Charles Darwin, including an autobiographical chapter. London: John Murray.
Sources on scientific correspondence and letter-writing
On Darwin’s correspondence:
- Browne, J. 1995–2002. Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: Jonathan Cape. Esp. pp. 1: 10–13.
- Moore, J. R. 1985. Darwin’s Genesis and Revelations. Isis 76: 570–80.
- Secord, J. 1981. Nature’s fancy: Charles Darwin and the breeding of pigeons. Isis 72: 163–86.
- Secord, J. 1985. Darwin and the breeders: a social history, in The Darwinian heritage, edited by David Kohn. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pp. 519–42.
- White, P. 2007. Letters and the scientific life in the age of professionalization, in New Perspectives in British Cultural History, edited by R. Crone. Cambridge Scholars Press.
- White, P. 2008. Correspondence as a Medium of Reception and Appropriation, in The reception of Charles Darwin in Europe, edited by Thomas Glick and Eve-Marie Engels. London: Continuum.
On correspondence in science:
- Goodman, D. 1994. The republic of letters: a cultural history of the French Enlightenment. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pp. 136–52.
- Miller, D. P. 1996. Joseph Banks, empire, and ‘
Centers of calculation’ in Late Hanoverian London, in Visions of empire: voyages, botany and representations of nature, edited by D. P. Miller and H. P. Riell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 21–37.
- Secord, A. 1994. Corresponding interests: artisans and gentlemen in nineteenth-century natural history. British Journal for the History of Science 27: 383–408.
- Shteir, A. B. 1990. Botanical dialogues: Maria Jackson and women’s popular science writing in England. Eighteenth-Century Studies 23: 301–17.
- Spary, E. C. 2000. Utopia’s garden: French natural history from old regime to revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 2.
On the history of letter writing:
- Altman, J. G. 1992. Epistolary conduct: the evolution of the letter manual in France in the eighteenth century. Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 304: 866–69.
- Bazerman, C. 2000. Letters and the social grounding of differentiated genres, in Letter writing as a social practice, edited by David Barton and Nigel Hall. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pp. 15–29.
- Chartier, R. 1997. An ordinary kind of writing: model letters and letter-writing in Ancien Régime France, in Correspondence: models of letter-writing from the middle ages to the nineteenth century, edited by R. Chartier et al. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pp. 1–23.
- Earle, R., ed. 1999. Epistolary selves: etters and letter-writers, 1600–1945. Aldershot: Ashgate.
- Hall, N. 1999. The materiality of letter writing, in Letter writing as a social practice, edited by D. Barton and N. Hall. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pp. 83–108.
- Hornbeak, K. G. 1934. The compleat letter-writer in English, 1568–1800. Smith College Studies in Modern Languages 15.
On letter writing as literary form:
- Beebee, T. O. 1999. Epistolary fiction in Europe, 1500–1850. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Favret, M. A. 1993. Romantic correspondence: women, politics, and the fiction of letters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- MacArthur, E. J. 1990. Extravagant narratives: closure and dynamics in the epistolary form. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pp. 36–43.
Some 19th-century sources on letter writing:
- Davies, J. 1870. Letter writing. Quarterly Review 129: 220–44.
- Lucas, E. V. 1898. Concerning correspondence. Cornhill Magazine 77: 509–17.
- Lyell, A. 1896. English letter writing in the nineteenth century. Edinburgh Review 183: 306–35.
- Roberts, W. 1843. History of letter-writing from the earliest period to the fifth century. London: William Pickering.