Report: “Darwin’s Lost Treasure, Found: A Talk With the Librarian and the Historian Who Authenticated the Return of Two of Charles Darwin’s Missing Notebooks”

From The New Yorker:

In April, 2017, Dr. Jessica Gardner became the university’s [University of Cambridge] head librarian. She soon learned about the missing notebooks, whose loss was known to only a few. Discovering their whereabouts became a priority. Gardner sought advice from the national-security adviser for the Arts Council England and an expert with the Metropolitan Police and others who have worked on high-profile cases of cultural theft around the world. The message was consistent: “Go public.” In November, 2020, the university came clean, publishing a description of the notebooks and the presentation case in which they had been kept; Interpol was informed.

Sixteen months later, on March 9th, at around eight in the morning, Gardner arrived at her office on the fourth floor of the library’s seventeen-story main tower to begin a string of Zoom meetings.

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When Gardner’s personal assistant, who has chosen to remain anonymous, arrived at half past nine, she spied a bright-pink gift bag on the floor outside the librarian’s office, an area surveyed by a couple of seventeenth-century oil portraits but, at the time, no CCTV camera. There was a large brown envelope inside the gift bag and a card that read, “Librarian. Happy Easter. X.” Believing it to be a present for her boss, the assistant took the package to Gardner’s office. A little while later, she checked the parcel again and realized it was something else entirely.

Learn More, Read the Complete Article (1224 words)

See Also: Darwin Notebooks Missing for 20 Years Returned to University of Cambridge Library; Items Anonymously Left in a Pink Gift Bag, 15 Months After Launch of a Worldwide Appeal to Find Them (April 5, 2022)

See Also: Cambridge University Launches a Public Appeal to Help Locate Two of Charles Darwin’s Notebooks That Were Most Likely Stolen From Library (November 24, 2020)

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