Charles Darwin notebooks returned after 20 years

UK: As a Librarian at the prestigious Cambridge University, Dr.Jessica Gardner is used to receiving mail.

But there was something different about the parcel she received on March 9, which was left in a public area of the library outside her office. It would set her heart racing, cause tears to well in her eyes, and leave her shaking with joy but also disbelief.

Inside a bright pink gift bag was a dark blue, but empty, archive box. Its priceless contents were wrapped separately in cling film and sealed in a brown paper envelope with the following typed words: “Librarian. Happy Easter. X”.

“Inside that envelope was what we’d all been looking for so many years,” Gardner told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

They found two notebooks that belonged to Charles Darwin and contained his 1837 Tree of Life sketches, his first use of the metaphor to convey evolution.

They were removed from the Special Collections Strong Rooms for photographing between September and November 2000. The rooms contain the library’s rarest and most valuable items.

In January 2001, routine checks revealed they were missing. For years it was thought they had been misplaced in the library.

But when Gardner became a librarian at Cambridge University in 2017, she ordered a major review of the notebooks’ disappearance and concluded that they had been stolen.“That was devastating,” she said. She launched a global public appeal seeking their return.

“It’s been two decades since they went missing and then the public appeal went out in November 2020 and 15 months later here we are.

“There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind these are the original notebooks, precious Charles Darwin notebooks and they’re now home,” she said.

– THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD