1859: More than Darwin.

I like the fact that Chicago's Newberry Library, amid this year's hoopla over the 150th anniversary of Darwin's The Origin of the Species, has chosen to mount the small exhibition "1859: Much More than the Origin." It focuses on other important works published in 1859, such as George Eliot's Adam Bede, Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson's The Idylls of the King.

And mystery fans will be glad to see that the library's online description of the exhibition notes that 1859 was the birth year of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the year of the first published installments of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White.

Hurry, though, to see the exhibition: it closes September 12th.


About the image: Wilkie Collins, also working the same year as Darwin. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.