Wallace Correspondence Project

The Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project (WCP) is an ongoing scholarly initiative to create an archive (digital and in print) of the letters and manuscripts of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913). Wallace, a 19th‑century British naturalist and explorer, is best known as the co‑discoverer (with Charles Darwin) of evolution by natural selection and as the "father" of evolutionary biogeography. The project's purpose is to locate, digitize, catalogue, transcribe and publish the surviving correspondence to and from Wallace, plus his other manuscripts such as notebooks, and make them freely accessible and searchable. It seeks to uncover new insights into Wallace's life and work — from evolutionary theory and biogeography, to social issues of the Victorian era.

History

The idea of digitally preserving Wallace's letters dates to the early 2000s, when Wallace scholar Dr George Beccaloni (then based at the Natural History Museum, London), recognized that Wallace's correspondence (spanning decades of scholarly work and public life) was too important to remain scattered and inaccessible. By 2010 a formal project led by Beccaloni was initiated to digitise and transcribe every known letter to or from Wallace.

Using teams of researchers and volunteers, the project has successively identified and collected digital copies of Wallace's letters from archives and private collections worldwide. A public website called "Wallace Letters Online" (now defunct) was launched in 2013 to host scanned images and draft transcripts of the letters. In 2021 the project adopted a new digital platform called Epsilon, replacing the old portal. In 2023 the project published a 542‑page scholarly catalogue of Wallace's correspondence – the first listing of all known letters – further advancing its mission to organize and share the material.