Falling foul of natural selection: Samuel Butler and the Darwins
Many of the great evolutionary theorists of the nineteenth century argued and advanced their ideas through correspondence – with their associates and with their rivals. Alison Pearn, Associate Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project, looks at the letters exchanged by Charles Darwin and Samuel Butler, and charts the disintegration of their relationship from a shared spirit of intellectual enquiry to a state of personal and public conflict.