Background

 

In the weeks before Queen Victoria's coronation in 1838, Charles Darwin sought medical advice for his mysterious physical symptoms. He then travelled to Scotland for rest and a "geologising expedition" but also revisited the old haunts of his undergraduate days. On the day of the coronation, 28 June 1838, Darwin was in Edinburgh. Two weeks later, he opened a private notebook—Notebook M—for philosophical speculation, and, over the next three months, filled it with his ideas about hereditary influences on the psychological aspects of life. Darwin also made his first attempt at autobiography in August 1838.

Darwin fully grasps his conception of natural selection towards the end of September 1838, after encountering the sixth edition of the Essay on Population (1826) by Thomas Malthus.^[8][10][11] However, Malthus and his essay are strangely unmentioned in Notebook M, their acknowledgement delayed till October 1838 in Notebook N.

 

illustration of grief from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals