This online exhibition was first published in 2009 by Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. It accompanied and featured content from a physical exhibition of rare materials displayed in Cornell University’s Carl A. Kroch Library from February 12 to October 7, 2009 and in the Museum of Earth (Ithaca, NY) from February 2 to June 11, 2009. Cornell University Library archived the original version of the online exhibition in 2024 to preserve its earlier design. This version maintains access to the original images and text within an updated website.
In 2009 the Cornell University Library and the Museum of the Earth celebrate the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. This collaborative exhibition, extending through both venues, features documents, rare books, engravings, photographs, zoological specimens, and artifacts. The Museum of the Earth also offers family-friendly exhibits and activities.
“Charles Darwin: After the Origin” focuses on a significant period in Darwin’s life that has thus far received little attention—the twenty-two years following the publication of Origin of the Species in 1859. Six years after his voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle, Darwin settled down with his growing family at Down House, Kent, south of London. There he wrote his famous book and then continued his highly original studies in natural history, publishing at least ten more books and countless papers. Darwin worked tirelessly during these decades to collect further support for ideas he presented in the Origin of Species.
During these last two decades of his life, Darwin labored in his gardens and greenhouses studying insectivorous plants, orchids, cross-pollination, and movement in plants. Sexual selection and its role in animal evolution was another focus of Darwin’s later years. His 1871 book, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex explored human descent, a topic he had not covered in the Origin of Species. Darwin was one of the first in science to make extensive use of photography in a publication. His investigations will provide visitors to the Museum of the Earth with the opportunity to examine their own facial expressions in relation to questions Darwin explored in his 1872 book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Additional work on the variation of animals and plants under domestication, geological pursuits, and Darwin's famous study of earthworms will also be explored. Darwin's family helped him in his work, and the setting for his research at Down House is an ever present background to the exhibitions in Ithaca.
The Carl A. Kroch Library and the Museum of the Earth each provide stimulating opportunities to examine the last twenty-two years of Darwin’s life. We encourage visitors to take advantage of the full scope of this exhibition by visiting both venues.