FIRST AND FOREMOST, I would like to thank Ben Williams and his staff at the library of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago for their early support of my project. As an independent scholar, I will always be indebted to Ben Williams, who provided me with an invaluable letter of introduction that opened doors that might otherwise have remained closed to me.
The writing of this book was indeed a journey. Along the way, I met or corresponded with a number of people who provided me with advice as well as access to original materials from which to work. I would like to single out Gina Douglas, librarian of the Linnean Society of London; A. Tatham, keeper of the collections of the Royal Geographical Society, London; Leslie Price, archivist of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Stella Brecknell, librarian of the Hope Entomological Collections at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History; John Handford, former archivist and librarian of Macmillan, London; Anne Barrett, college archivist of the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London; Paul Cooper, assistant zoological librarian of the Natural History Museum, London; Robert W. O’Hara, an independent researcher who combed through the holdings of the Public Record Office for useful tidbits; Michael Palmer, archivist of the Zoological Society of London; Katharine Taylor, principal archivist of the Manchester Archives and Local Studies, Manchester Central Library; and Adam Perkins, Royal Greenwich Observatory archivist in the Department of Manuscripts and university archives at Cambridge University. All these individuals were unfailingly courteous when I repeatedly contacted them either by e-mail or in person for anything related to Wallace. I would also like to thank Lady de Bellaigue, at the library of Windsor Palace, for providing me with copies of letters to King Edward VII and Michele Minto, at the Wellcome Institute in London, for obtaining many of the photographs used in the text.
In the United States, librarians and archivists at the following libraries provided me with photocopies of letters to and from or relating to Wallace, not all of which were used in the final version of this biography: Dittrick Medical History Center of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland; Ernst Mayr and Houghton Libraries of Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.; Milton S. Eisenhower Library of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Yale University library, New Haven, Conn.; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas, Austin; Bookfellows Foundation of Knox College, Galesburg, III; American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; John Hay Library of Brown University, Providence, R.I.; and Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Washington, D.C.
I am especially grateful to Kenneth Parker, an indefatigable champion of Wallace, who gave me a tour of Wallace’s haunts in Hertsford and who introduced me to Richard Wallace, one of Wallace’s two grandsons, who kindly allowed me to examine memorabilia not yet in the hands of archivists or librarians. Throughout the research phase of this book, he encouraged me to forge ahead, delighted by the appearance of another (especially American) aficionado of his grandfather’s life and works.
There were other Virgils who served as guides at critical junctures: Mark R. D. Seaward of the University of Bradford; Leonard G. Wilson, professor emeritus of the history of medicine at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Richard Milner, senior editor of Natural History Magazine; Michael Pearson, who laboriously downloaded transcriptions of Wallace’s Malay and American journals from an ancient computer; Bruce Evensen (my cousin), professor of journalism at De Paul University, Chicago; and Sam Fleishman, whose expert advice and guidance were indispensable to me. A number of friends helped me shape my book by reading it at various stages, among which I should mention John Davidson, Neel French, Matthew Lambert, Kevin Murphy, Mohamed Salem, and John Vranicar.
Last but not least, I must thank Robin Smith and Irene Pavitt at Columbia University Press, whose enthusiasm and attentiveness made publication possible; Henry Krawitz, for the unrewarding but Herculean task of reconciling the text, notes, and bibliography; and Sara Lippincott, a supreme editor, who meticulously scoured my manuscript for consistency and clarity and gave me the hope that this was a worthy undertaking.
