Darwin's Children Doodled on His Work

02/28/2023

Darwin's Children Doodled on His Work

I draw like other people bite their nails.
Pablo Picasso, artist, 1881-1973

It appears that Charles Darwin, like many of us, offered his children the blank backs of his work papers for his children’s use. A handful of original manuscript pages from his seminal work On the Origin of Species have survived with his children’s delightful drawings on the reverse. Darwin’s children seem to have inherited their parent’s creative and curious minds. One sketch offers a peek inside a house. Another includes a sword-bearing soldier mounted on…a carrot!

...It appears the children unwittingly played a role in preserving the few remaining original pieces of Darwin's groundbreaking work. Darwin’s manuscripts are available to the public at the Darwin Manuscripts Project at the American Museum of Natural History.

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