Month 9 (March 2012)
On Saturday 17th March we hosted our first Butler Day – a public celebration of the Samuel Butler Project. We were thrilled to receive more than 400 visitors in the Old Library, where a special exhibition showcased Samuel Butler’s works on evolution in the context of the debates that dominated nineteenth-century intellectual thought.
Samuel Butler
Butler was a controversial figure, originally championing Charles Darwin’s work but later becoming his staunch opponent, advocating instead the older ideas of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. Butler knew the Darwins – their family connections went back a few generations – and his continued effort to undermine the validity of natural selection was just one aspect of Butler’s pervasive resistance to anything he perceived as established authority.
Charles Darwin
These fascinating personal relationships were introduced and discussed at the Butler Day by Alison Pearn, Associate Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project. You can read more about the precise beginnings of the public conflict between Butler and Charles Darwin in our latest online exhibition, which features a number of the items included in the live exhibition.
We also heard from literary scholar Elinor Shaffer, who shed light on the European contexts in which Butler’s fiction, photography and scientific writing can be viewed, and from philosopher Ben Irvine, who entertained and engaged an impressive audience with his beginners’ guide to ‘evolution, philosophy and well-being’. You can now listen to Ben’s and Elinor’s talks online.
In addition to the public open day I was pleased to arrange some private views of the exhibition for local school groups, members of the U3A (University of the Third Age), and graduate students at St John’s. Everyone genuinely seemed to enjoy their visit, and we look forward to welcoming many more education groups to the Library in the coming months!