I’m always fascinated by these in-depth bibliography efforts, and this one, with its unique 300-page catalog detailing 7,400 titles from Charles Darwin’s library, is nothing short of extraordinary.

John van Wyhe, the academic who has led the “overwhelming” endeavour, said it showed the extraordinary extent of Darwin’s research into the work of others.

“It also shows how insanely eclectic Darwin was,” Van Wyhe said. “There is this vast sea of things which might be an American or German news clipping about a duck or invasive grasshoppers. That’s been the fun part, not the formal books but the other things … all of which pool together to make the theories and publications we all know.”

The Guardian article is here. I had to dig a little to surface the actual catalog on the Darwin Online website. Many titles even have links to their text contents and images.