Charles Darwin, His Beloved Daughter, and How We Find Meaning in Mortality

...Love, Loss, and the Banality of Survival

In the spring of 1849, ten years before On the Origin of Species shook the foundation of humanity's understanding of life, the polymathic astronomer John Herschel — coiner of the word photography, son of Uranus discoverer William Herschel and nephew of Caroline Herschel, the world's first professional female astronomer — invited the forty-year-old Charles Darwin (February 12, 1809–April 19, 1882) to contribute the section on geology to an ambitious manual on ten major branches of science, commissioned by the Royal Navy. Darwin produced a primer that promised to make good geologists even of readers with no prior knowledge of the discipline, so that they might "enjoy the high satisfaction of contributing to the perfection of the history of this wonderful world."

In submitting his manuscript, Darwin wrote to Herschel:

I much fear, from what you say of size of type that it will be too long; but I do not see how I could shorten it, except by rewriting it, & that is a labour which would make me groan. I do not much like it, but I have in vain thought how to make it better. I should be grateful for any corrections or erasures on your part.

A perfectionist prone to debilitating anxiety, Darwin was vexed by the editorial process. But in the autumn of 1850, just as the manual was about to go to press, trouble of a wholly different order eclipsed the professional irritation: The Darwins' beloved nine-year-old daughter, Annie — the second of their ten children and Charles's favorite, fount of curiosity, sunshine of the household — fell ill with a mysterious ailment...

https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/02/12/annie-darwin/