To Charles Kingsley 30 April [1867]1
Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.
Ap. 30
My dear Mr Kingsley
I fully agree with you on the importance of giving to a certain extent a scientific character to Fraser's Mag.; & I do assure you that it would have given me sincere pleasure to have assisted you in any way.2 But at present I really cannot: I am daily knocked up by correcting proof sheets & the printers are a dozen sheets a head of me, so that I greatly doubt whether I can finish the book by November when Murray wants it.3 Hence it would be ruin to me to stop work for a week or fortnight, & I could not write an article in less time than this. I have so much unpublished matter half completed that I have often vowed I wd never write miscellaneous articles, but I shd have been much tempted under other circumstances to have broken my vow at your request.
So I hope that you will forgive me & believe me | my dear Mr Kingsley | yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin
The year is established by the reference to the proof-sheets of Variation (see n. 3, below).
No letter in which Kingsley invited CD to contribute to Fraser's Magazine has been found. Kingsley himself was a contributor to Fraser's; the main emphasis of the magazine was politics, religion, and social conditions, and it was an 'organ of progressive thought'. From May to August 1867 Kingsley ran Fraser's Magazine during the absence of the editor, James Anthony Froude. (Wellesley index 2: 303–14.)
CD was working on the page proofs of Variation (see 'Journal' (Correspondence vol. 15, Appendix II)). No letter from John Murray, CD's publisher, asking that the book be finished by November has been found, but see the letter to W. B. Tegetmeier, 6 January [1867].
Regrets that he is too busy getting his book [Variation] ready for publication to contribute an article to Fraser's Magazine.
Letter details
DCP-LETT-5520
Charles Robert Darwin
Source of text
B. C. Guild (private collection)
Darwin, C. R.
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, "Letter no. 5520," accessed on 20 July 2019, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-5520.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 15