If you’ve ever wondered whose addresses Charles Darwin was sure to keep tabs on—or even a few rat poison recipes—you’re in luck. A digitized edition of the famed naturalist’s personal address book is available online for the first time. Uploaded as part of the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) ongoing Darwin Online project, the 48-page-long artifact features around 500 entries ranging from contacts to shopping lists.
“It’s incredible that this little treasure-trove of details by Darwin has remained unpublished until now,” NUS science historian John van Wyhe said in a statement. “It offers fascinating new insights into his life and the way he worked.”
For the last 50 years, archivists have been cataloguing and preserving the naturalist’s lifetime of surviving correspondences, resulting in 30 volumes of edited material. But despite the collection’s roughly 15,000 letters to and from Darwin, the recently digitized address book still manages to contain previously undocumented individuals, businesses, and subject matter.
Multiple entries concern previously unknown pigeon breeders, for example. This is perhaps unsurprising, considering Darwin’s monumental On the Origin of Species is heavily informed by his longtime love and fascination with the domestic bird. Other, more unexpected details include the addresses of Oscar Wilde’s father and the social reform advocate, Octavia Hill. There are also multiple recipes jotted down for rat poisons–likely a necessity at Darwin’s small estate in Down, England, that included outbuildings and stables.
Interestingly, the address book’s first entries come from Darwin’s wife, Emma, not long after the couple married in January 1839. Darwin himself soon took over the book’s upkeep, and relied on its contents until his death in 1882.
