The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

In October 2009 Wallace's grandson Alfred John Russel Wallace discovered an important collection of documents which had belonged to his illustrious grandfather in the attic of his house. The majority of these were generously donated to the Natural History Museum's Wallace Family Archive, which already has most of the documents which the grandsons inherited from Wallace via their father William (this large collection was purchased by the NHM from the family in 2002). Amongst the items recently found by John are an amazing collection of about 90 photographs which the family understandably wishes to keep. There are some pictures of Wallace, but most are photos of his family, friends and colleagues -very few of which have ever been published or seen by the public before.

John and Richard Wallace have generously given the Wallace Memorial Fund permission to produce high resolution scans of these images and make them available on this website for study and to raise much needed funds for Wallace Fund projects. The scans will be put into the Image Galleries on this website over the next few weeks, but as a taster I am making four of the most interesting pictures available today. These are shown below and are as follows:

1) A hand-coloured cdv image of Wallace taken by his brother-in-law Thomas Sims in about 1862. Previously only a black and white version of this well known image (which was first published in Marchant in 1916) was known.

2) Wallace in his LL.D. robes. He was awarded an LL.D. from Dublin University in 1882, but no image of him wearing his robes has previously been made publically available. Wallace recieved two honorary doctorates - this one, plus one from Oxford University in 1889. This photograph is a cdv by Dublin photographer Geo. Mansfield. The image was somewhat damaged so I have restored it.

3) An informal portrait of Wallace with his wife Annie and their daughter Violet by an unknown photographer. This is one of the few informal portraits of ARW known and the only one I remember seeing him smiling in!

4) A cdv portrait of George Silk by an unknown photographer. This is the only image I have ever seen of George Silk - Wallace's closest childhood friend. Wallace met George in Hertford in about 1828 when Wallace was only about five years old. In his autobiography My Life, he describes how he came to meet George shortly after moving into a new house:

The house was "...the first of a row of four at the beginning of St. Andrew's Street, and I must have been a little more than six years old when I first remember myself in this house, which had a very narrow yard at the back, and a dwarf wall, perhaps five feet high, between us and the adjoining house. The very first incident which I remember, which happened, I think, on the morning after my arrival, was of a boy about my own age looking over this wall, who at once inquired, "Hullo! who are you?" I told him that I had just come, and what my name was, and we at once made friends. The stand of a water-butt enabled me to get up and sit upon the wall, and by means of some similar convenience he could do the same, and we were thus able to sit side by side and talk, or get over the wall and play together when we liked. Thus began the friendship of George Silk and Alfred Wallace, which, with long intervals of absence at various periods, has continued to this day."

1). ARW in c. 1862 aged c. 39, soon after his return from the Malay Archipelago. Copyright Wallace Memorial Fund.	2). Wallace in his LLD robes in 1882. Copyright Wallace Memorial Fund.
3). Alfred Russel Wallace, his wife Annie and their daughter Violet. Copyright Wallace Memorial Fund.	4). George Silk, childhood friend of Alfred Russel Wallace. Copyright Wallace Memorial Fund.