Thirty years ago, in 1993, I treated myself to the first 8 volumes of Darwin’s Correspondence, which was all that had been published at the time. Ever since, one of my ambitions has been to live long enough to collect the full set. Today, on my 58th birthday, I realised that ambition.
Now there’s the small matter of reading them all. I’m currently half-way through volume 12.
Wonderful! I wish I had at least one volume of the set... but I do have all the other books on the bottom shelf.
Are any of his family still living?
None of his contemporary family, obviously, but Darwin left a lot of living descendents. In December 2022, I attended an event where three of his descendents (all scientists) talked about what it was like to have such an illustrious predecessor. You can see the video of the even here.