The family has given me unstinted
confidence in using or rejecting letters and reminiscences, and although
I have consulted scientific and literary friends, I alone must be blamed
for sins of omission or commission. Nothing has been suppressed in the
unpublished letters, or in any of the letters which appear in these
volumes, because there was anything to hide. Everything Wallace wrote,
all his private letters, could be published to the world. His life was
an open book--"no weakness, no contempt, dispraise, or blame, nothing
but well and fair."
The profoundly interesting and now historic correspondence between
Darwin and Wallace, part of which has already appeared in the "Life and
Letters of Charles Darwin" and "More Letters," and part in Wallace's
autobiography, entitled "My Life," is here published, with new
additions, for the first time as a whole, so that the reader now has
before him the necessary material to form a true estimate of the origin
and growth of the theory of Natural Selection, and of the personal
relationships of its noble co-discoverers.
My warmest thanks are offered to Sir Francis Darwin for permission to
use his father's letters, for his annotations, and for rendering help in
checking the typescript of the Darwin letters; to Mr.
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