Sir Charles Lyell's Notebooks

Image

A remarkable survival, these 294 notebooks, spanning Lyell’s long scientific career (1825-1874), offer an unrivalled insight into personal influences, field observations, thoughts and relationships. These notebooks were acquired in 2019 thanks to a fundraising campaign, with many generous individual and institutional donors from the UK and overseas. Highlights include his travels throughout Europe and the United States of America, the drafts of his correspondence with the likes of Charles Darwin, his geological and landscape sketches and his constant gathering of evidence and refinement of his theories. 

Due to the enforced lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 virus, the digitisation programme for the notebooks is well behind schedule so, currently only a small sample is available online. These can be seen here:

• Notebook No. 4
• Notebook No. 22
• Notebook No. 23
• Notebook No. 55
• Notebook No. 64
• Notebook No. 65  
• MS Notes VII

Please note that the Lyell Notebooks contain some content that may be harmful or difficult to view. The University of Edinburgh collects materials from history, as well as artifacts from many cultures and time periods, to preserve and make available the historical record. As a result, some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions due to pervasive systemic intolerance. These are not the views of the University of Edinburgh.

Conservation and archival description work is ongoing in order to provide public access to this collection. To support these activities and digitisation, read more here.

Watch Charles Withers, Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Edinburgh, discussing the importance of Lyell's Note Books and how they relate to current issues of deep time and climate change in the short film "The Travels Of His Own Mind," made by Malcolm Brown, Digital Imaging Unit.

Read about the collection on the Library Blog - Through Lyell's Eyes