What do you think?
Rate this book
This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin: A writer's journey through my family
'A masterclass in how writers have to learn to fail and fail again before they have a hope of producing something like this book' Kathryn Hughes, The Mail on Sunday
'Wise, witty, and informative' The Literary Review
'Charming' The Spectator
'Refreshingly frank, witty, eloquent memoir-cum-biography-cum-rumination.' Saga Magazine
Here is the humility, naked courage and fiercely intelligent understanding of what writing a novel takes, and costs, no matter what happens to the finished product. The prize is the dangerous, painful, unwanted knowledge that Emma won at the end of the journey.' Jenn Ashworth, author of The Friday Gospels, Fell, etc, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Lancaster.Everybody knows about Charles Darwin, and many know about others in his family, from Erasmus Darwin and Tom Wedgwood, the first photographer, to composer Ralph Vaughan Williams and poet and radical John Cornford, the first Briton to be killed in the Spanish Civil War. But when Charles and Emma Darwin’s great-great-granddaughter, another Emma Darwin, tried to root her new novel in that history, the conflict between her complex heritage, and her own identity as a writer, became a battle that nearly killed her.
This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin takes the reader on a writer’s journey through the Darwin-Wedgwood-Galton clan, as seen through the lens of Emma’s struggle. Along the way, her wry, witty and honest memoir becomes a brave book about failure – and, above all, a book about writing and how stories are told. Richly illustrated with over 40 black and white images.
‘Wise, witty, and informative…’ The Literary Review
‘Refreshingly frank, witty, eloquent memoir-cun-biography-cum rumination’ Saga Magazine: Non-fiction book of the month.
‘Charming’ The Spectator
‘Here is the humility, naked courage and fiercely intelligent understanding of what writing
a novel takes, and costs, no matter what happens to the finished product. The prize is the
dangerous, painful, unwanted knowledge that Emma won at the end of the journey.’ JENN ASHWORTH
'Wise, witty, and informative' The Literary Review
'Charming' The Spectator
'Refreshingly frank, witty, eloquent memoir-cum-biography-cum-rumination.' Saga Magazine
Here is the humility, naked courage and fiercely intelligent understanding of what writing a novel takes, and costs, no matter what happens to the finished product. The prize is the dangerous, painful, unwanted knowledge that Emma won at the end of the journey.' Jenn Ashworth, author of The Friday Gospels, Fell, etc, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Lancaster.Everybody knows about Charles Darwin, and many know about others in his family, from Erasmus Darwin and Tom Wedgwood, the first photographer, to composer Ralph Vaughan Williams and poet and radical John Cornford, the first Briton to be killed in the Spanish Civil War. But when Charles and Emma Darwin’s great-great-granddaughter, another Emma Darwin, tried to root her new novel in that history, the conflict between her complex heritage, and her own identity as a writer, became a battle that nearly killed her.
This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin takes the reader on a writer’s journey through the Darwin-Wedgwood-Galton clan, as seen through the lens of Emma’s struggle. Along the way, her wry, witty and honest memoir becomes a brave book about failure – and, above all, a book about writing and how stories are told. Richly illustrated with over 40 black and white images.
‘Wise, witty, and informative…’ The Literary Review
‘Refreshingly frank, witty, eloquent memoir-cun-biography-cum rumination’ Saga Magazine: Non-fiction book of the month.
‘Charming’ The Spectator
‘Here is the humility, naked courage and fiercely intelligent understanding of what writing
a novel takes, and costs, no matter what happens to the finished product. The prize is the
dangerous, painful, unwanted knowledge that Emma won at the end of the journey.’ JENN ASHWORTH
328 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 12, 2019
9 people are currently reading
149 people want to read
About the author
Emma Darwin
17 books60 followersEmma Darwin was born and brought up in London, but has also spent time in both Manhattan and Brussels, and later studied Drama at university. Her debut novel The Mathematics of Love (Headline Review) is probably the only novel ever to have been simultaneously listed for both the Commonwealth Writers Best First Book, and the RNA Novel of the Year prizes. Her bestselling second novel, A Secret Alchemy (Headline Review), was part of a PhD at Goldsmiths, which explored the writing of historical fiction. Her first non-fiction book, Getting Started in Writing Historical Fiction (John Murray Learning/Teach Yourself), was published in March 2016. She has been helping writers for over a decade, and has particular interests in historical fiction and creative non-fiction; she taught Creative Writing for the Open University for several years, has worked with academic writing as an RLF Fellow at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Music, and blogs at This Itch of Writing.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 28, 2020
This has to be one of the most unusual books I've ever read. Historical fiction author and creative writing lecturer Emma Darwin takes us on the sometimes painful journey of failing to write a new novel. Along the way we meet many members of the Darwin / Wedgwood / Galton (and co.) clan as Emma (my apologies for using a first name, but to say 'Darwin' in this context would be totally confusing) tries to put together a historical fiction story that incorporates members of her family tree.
The obvious attraction for potential publishers and readers in such a novel is the Darwin name - Emma is great, great granddaughter of the Charles Darwin - however, she quickly dismisses Charles himself as a subject who is far too well known and takes us instead on a trip around a family tree that features a remarkable number of scientists, artists and other notables. In fact, if anything, it might seem that the struggle would be to find individuals who were dull. In reality, though, the difficulty that forms a thread throughout the book is that the well-known individuals (even featuring one of my musical heroes, Ralph Vaughan Williams) are just too familiar and documented, not giving the wiggle-room that a historical fiction writer needs, while the unfamiliar names tend to be rather, well, ordinary, without enough in their lives to carry a story.
As a writer myself, I find Emma's description of her process fascinating. There surely can't be any branch of fiction that requires so much research as historical fiction (though, to be fair, it seems that Emma is particularly conscientious about this - I suspect there are some hist fic authors who are more cavalier) - it feels more like the depth of research required for a non-fiction book. We are taken into the back room, as it were, experiencing the to and fro with Emma's agent (constantly asking where the story is within the writing), and the whole process is illustrated both with snippets of novel-under-development and photographs - mostly period - as photography is another of Emma's passions.
In the end, after several false starts, the central character seems to be likely to be Imogen, a fictional character (I think - I'll explain why 'I think' in a moment) who becomes entangled with the extended Darwin family. After attempts to make the novel work in various periods, this pushes the story forward to focus primarily on the 1930s. The fact that I have to say 'I think' about Imogen being fictional highlights the only real problem with this book. There are so many characters tried out that I totally lost track of who they are (not helped by a family tendency to reuse first names). At one point, Emma's agent complains about how many characters are introduced in a draft of the novel - it's the same for the meta-book.
Despite the degree of confusion arising from this, the reader gets a fascinating insight into a British dynasty in which pretty well everyone will have heard of a few names, combined with an exploration of Emma's writing process and some of the difficulties writers come up with along the way - including honesty about the requirement to keep money coming in somehow. There's a fascinating conflict between the urge to use the family to get the public interest and the desire not to intrude on real people's lives, especially as the time period moves to one where there may still be living relatives. A truly innovative book.
The obvious attraction for potential publishers and readers in such a novel is the Darwin name - Emma is great, great granddaughter of the Charles Darwin - however, she quickly dismisses Charles himself as a subject who is far too well known and takes us instead on a trip around a family tree that features a remarkable number of scientists, artists and other notables. In fact, if anything, it might seem that the struggle would be to find individuals who were dull. In reality, though, the difficulty that forms a thread throughout the book is that the well-known individuals (even featuring one of my musical heroes, Ralph Vaughan Williams) are just too familiar and documented, not giving the wiggle-room that a historical fiction writer needs, while the unfamiliar names tend to be rather, well, ordinary, without enough in their lives to carry a story.
As a writer myself, I find Emma's description of her process fascinating. There surely can't be any branch of fiction that requires so much research as historical fiction (though, to be fair, it seems that Emma is particularly conscientious about this - I suspect there are some hist fic authors who are more cavalier) - it feels more like the depth of research required for a non-fiction book. We are taken into the back room, as it were, experiencing the to and fro with Emma's agent (constantly asking where the story is within the writing), and the whole process is illustrated both with snippets of novel-under-development and photographs - mostly period - as photography is another of Emma's passions.
In the end, after several false starts, the central character seems to be likely to be Imogen, a fictional character (I think - I'll explain why 'I think' in a moment) who becomes entangled with the extended Darwin family. After attempts to make the novel work in various periods, this pushes the story forward to focus primarily on the 1930s. The fact that I have to say 'I think' about Imogen being fictional highlights the only real problem with this book. There are so many characters tried out that I totally lost track of who they are (not helped by a family tendency to reuse first names). At one point, Emma's agent complains about how many characters are introduced in a draft of the novel - it's the same for the meta-book.
Despite the degree of confusion arising from this, the reader gets a fascinating insight into a British dynasty in which pretty well everyone will have heard of a few names, combined with an exploration of Emma's writing process and some of the difficulties writers come up with along the way - including honesty about the requirement to keep money coming in somehow. There's a fascinating conflict between the urge to use the family to get the public interest and the desire not to intrude on real people's lives, especially as the time period moves to one where there may still be living relatives. A truly innovative book.
March 25, 2019
I'm not certain into what genre Emma Darwin's wonderfully honest account of trying to write a novel about her famous ancestors fits. Perhaps it's an emerging genre. I hope so because it's a real delight for anyone interested in the creative process. She lays bare the hidden mechanisms involved in writing historical fiction: the vast amount of research that is at once both fascinating and paralysing; the exciting revelations that turn out to be fools gold; the moments of sheer pleasure when the reality of lived experience coincides with the demands of an imagined world; and, above all, the difficulty of turning people's lives into narrative material, particularly when, as in this case, those lives belong to members of your own family. Often funny, sometimes painful, but always intriguing, this is not a book about Charles Darwin, it's a guided tour of a writer's imagination.
May 23, 2021
Should really give this five stars, because it was fascinating - but I am bitter that there is no 'Black Bone & Shadow' (with or without Darwins) to read. What of poor second-class Imogen, dashing Miko, and Eva's baby!? *sob*
March 8, 2019
What is This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin about if it isn’t about Charles Darwin? The creative process, primarily, as the author, Emma Darwin, explores her failure to write a novel about the Darwin family, and the toll that failure takes on her, ultimately landing her in the hospital with a heart attack. Somewhat secondarily it also takes a look at the burdens and benefits of being a member of a large, prominent, and tightly-knit family.
Emma Darwin is an English novelist and teacher of creative writing. She also happens to be the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, along with 150 other great-great-grandchildren. This book—a blend of memoir, biography, and essay on the art of creative writing, plus excerpts from her fiction, including the failed work—has its roots in the Darwin Bicentennial (2009) when her agent began pushing her to take advantage of her name and connections, and write about the Darwin clan. She hadn’t wanted to capitalise on those connections, but since every review of her work included the connection to ‘The Ancestor’, it seemed a sensible thing to do. Why not?
Despite her own instincts which told her not to, over the next several years she explored her family’s histories, starting with Erasmus Darwin, the 18th-century natural philosopher and grandfather of Charles, and working her way down. She was looking for what she calls the white spaces, the gaps between the well-documented events in these famous people’s lives where a novelist could find room for invention. After much scrambling around in the family tree and some false starts, she made a serious attempt to write a story involving her grandparent’s generation (Charles Darwin’s grandchildren) spanning the two World Wars and the Spanish Civil War.
She describes the multiple iterations she made on the expanding story, and the reasoning behind each rewrite, as her agent tells her that each new version still isn’t working. She eventually had to admit that a serious lack of tension in her novel was due to the tensions she was living with as a writer: Her dread of showing off or offending her dozens of cousins. The constraints put on her imagination by the fact that the lives of the more notable members had already been thoroughly covered, often by multiple biographers, and by her own desire to stick to the essential core of the lives of these real people. And perhaps most important, her attempt to write what someone else wanted her to write rather than the stories she wanted to tell—stories that kept leading her away from the Darwins. How does one write a compelling story about people who generally led productive lives without a lot of drama?
She does eventually come to terms with failure, after recovering from her heart attack, and gives us this detailed example of one creative endeavour’s multiple metamorphoses. As another novelist who has ripped apart and rewritten one of my babies, I can sympathise, and appreciate the glimpse into someone else’s mind.
Personally, I’ll be looking forward to her next novel even if it has nothing to do with the Darwins. I didn’t read this book because I have a great interest in Charles Darwin. (I knew who he was, of course, but not much about his life outside of his contributions to science.) I read this book because I discovered Emma’s blog, This Itch of Writing , some time ago, and it was more helpful to me as a fledgling novelist than any other source of writing advice I have found.
Besides the story about her story, the tour of her family tree was fascinating, and I’m more interested now in digging further in, particularly regarding a few standouts: Gwen Raverat, artist and memoirist; Julia Wedgewood, novelist who appears to have fallen in love with Robert Browning after the death of his wife Elizabeth Barrett; and the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. (The man who wrote the gorgeous hymn tune Sine Nomine—a.k.a For All the Saints—was an atheist? I had no idea. I hadn’t connected him with the Darwins, either.)
There were a few other minor gems in this work. In one place, she says:
Yes, my family has passed down women’s names, too. In another spot she describes pain “on a scale from one to childbirth”. (Yes! Love that!)
To sum up, as another writer, I found this book very interesting, but it isn’t only for other writers. There’s enough meat here about creative thinking in general that it’s worthy of a wider audience.
This review was first published on This Need to Read.
Emma Darwin is an English novelist and teacher of creative writing. She also happens to be the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, along with 150 other great-great-grandchildren. This book—a blend of memoir, biography, and essay on the art of creative writing, plus excerpts from her fiction, including the failed work—has its roots in the Darwin Bicentennial (2009) when her agent began pushing her to take advantage of her name and connections, and write about the Darwin clan. She hadn’t wanted to capitalise on those connections, but since every review of her work included the connection to ‘The Ancestor’, it seemed a sensible thing to do. Why not?
Despite her own instincts which told her not to, over the next several years she explored her family’s histories, starting with Erasmus Darwin, the 18th-century natural philosopher and grandfather of Charles, and working her way down. She was looking for what she calls the white spaces, the gaps between the well-documented events in these famous people’s lives where a novelist could find room for invention. After much scrambling around in the family tree and some false starts, she made a serious attempt to write a story involving her grandparent’s generation (Charles Darwin’s grandchildren) spanning the two World Wars and the Spanish Civil War.
She describes the multiple iterations she made on the expanding story, and the reasoning behind each rewrite, as her agent tells her that each new version still isn’t working. She eventually had to admit that a serious lack of tension in her novel was due to the tensions she was living with as a writer: Her dread of showing off or offending her dozens of cousins. The constraints put on her imagination by the fact that the lives of the more notable members had already been thoroughly covered, often by multiple biographers, and by her own desire to stick to the essential core of the lives of these real people. And perhaps most important, her attempt to write what someone else wanted her to write rather than the stories she wanted to tell—stories that kept leading her away from the Darwins. How does one write a compelling story about people who generally led productive lives without a lot of drama?
She does eventually come to terms with failure, after recovering from her heart attack, and gives us this detailed example of one creative endeavour’s multiple metamorphoses. As another novelist who has ripped apart and rewritten one of my babies, I can sympathise, and appreciate the glimpse into someone else’s mind.
Personally, I’ll be looking forward to her next novel even if it has nothing to do with the Darwins. I didn’t read this book because I have a great interest in Charles Darwin. (I knew who he was, of course, but not much about his life outside of his contributions to science.) I read this book because I discovered Emma’s blog, This Itch of Writing , some time ago, and it was more helpful to me as a fledgling novelist than any other source of writing advice I have found.
Besides the story about her story, the tour of her family tree was fascinating, and I’m more interested now in digging further in, particularly regarding a few standouts: Gwen Raverat, artist and memoirist; Julia Wedgewood, novelist who appears to have fallen in love with Robert Browning after the death of his wife Elizabeth Barrett; and the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. (The man who wrote the gorgeous hymn tune Sine Nomine—a.k.a For All the Saints—was an atheist? I had no idea. I hadn’t connected him with the Darwins, either.)
There were a few other minor gems in this work. In one place, she says:
Women’s first names are the linguistic equivalent of mitochondrial DNA: transmitted through the mother, as surnames may be transmitted, like other DNA, through the father.
Yes, my family has passed down women’s names, too. In another spot she describes pain “on a scale from one to childbirth”. (Yes! Love that!)
To sum up, as another writer, I found this book very interesting, but it isn’t only for other writers. There’s enough meat here about creative thinking in general that it’s worthy of a wider audience.
This review was first published on This Need to Read.
March 31, 2019
This (the hardback version) I found fascinating, enjoyable, informative and very, very rewarding - much more so than would have been the case if it had been about Charles Darwin (we've already three or more books in the house specifically on him). As a writer, I already rated Emma Darwin very highly as both a novelist and a writer about writing – her ‘This itch of writing’ blog the most down to earth and sensible I’ve read – and because I began writing in order to write my own family history this delving into the far greater intricacies of her own, seemed tailor-made for me. The detailed accounts of the perceived 'failure' of each stage, the reasoning behind the why and how; the many times repeated attempts to find other ways of telling were admirable and informative, both in their recall and the far-from-easy ability to get up and try again.
As well as the many attempts to enter the fray with one or other of the lesser-known family members,¬ and the accompanying reluctance to pry or be seem to be over-prurient or boastful, there were lessons in problem solving, in the flexible used of research and, above all, in the particular highs of writing fiction, of creating wholly rounded, interacting characters of one’s own. From the excerpts of what was achieved, I hope that a novel will emerge, even without Darwins and their kin, because it seems one is long overdue.
As well as the many attempts to enter the fray with one or other of the lesser-known family members,¬ and the accompanying reluctance to pry or be seem to be over-prurient or boastful, there were lessons in problem solving, in the flexible used of research and, above all, in the particular highs of writing fiction, of creating wholly rounded, interacting characters of one’s own. From the excerpts of what was achieved, I hope that a novel will emerge, even without Darwins and their kin, because it seems one is long overdue.
December 1, 2019
A very smart use for a failed manuscript -- write a book about trying to write a book. They say nothing you write is ever wasted, and Emma Darwin proves this, including excerpts from her unpublished manuscript Black Shadow and Bone, to illustrate changes in thinking about character and plot development, and demonstrating the immersiveness of the endless revising process. I love the analogy of the kitchen floor -- and well understand how writing can be like patching together multiple types of timbers, and dodgy DIY repairs hoping no one will notice the large hole if it's filled with putty. What further complicates Darwin's manuscript, is the positioning of the novel -- it must have a non-fiction hook, which in her case is her Darwin ancestry. There are some wonderful insights into writing historical figures as well as fictionalising family members with living descendants. I thoroughly recommend this hybrid memoir / writing journey / craft book to all writers, and readers unaware of the immense effort that goes into crafting a novel to publishable standard. Literally blood, sweat, tears and soul go into it. That should be worth more than the measly royalties authors receive.
June 12, 2022
Fascinating and courageously written history of the historical novel that Darwin failed to get published. Shed loads here for writers including delicious references to other writers and their books about writing. I loved her approach to writing historical fiction and she has plenty of good and sensible advice regarding the 'it's a historical novel not a historical textbook '. As a writer of historical fiction for children, and as a writer of a manuscript that was recently soundly rejected by my publisher, this was such a timely read for me!
May 29, 2019
Emma Darwin's book ticked all the boxes for me, especially since I was reading it in Cambridge UK where Charles spent quite a bit of time both before and after his Beagle journey. This book is a fascinating account of the creative challenges one faces when trying to write. It is almost a memoir and is pleasingly quirky in ideation and narrative. I learned so much about the Darwin and Wedgewood family. A very satisfying read that wasn't really about Charles Darwin -- but was.
October 27, 2019
I saw a Emma Darwin talking about this book, about finding the space between the many famous and well documented characters in her family tree, to write a novel.
She was fascinating, and so is the family, but I felt a bit disappointed with this as a read; it didn’t quite hang together somehow. Full of delicious family and general facts though.
She was fascinating, and so is the family, but I felt a bit disappointed with this as a read; it didn’t quite hang together somehow. Full of delicious family and general facts though.
February 20, 2020
Honest, funny, instructive. Emma prolonged her thoughts on the occasion of a "Why I Write" on Slow Culture.
May 15, 2020
This book is so for the writer who is conflicted about writing the thing they know best (their family). As good a craft book as it is a non-fiction "journey" book. I noted a dozen or more words-to-live- and/or-write-by.
October 25, 2022
As someone also trying to 'find the story' and write a novel about my own life, this made for a fascinating read
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews