Anniversary of Alfred Russel Wallace's death

Today is the 97th anniversary of Alfred Russel Wallace's death, and to mark the occasion the Wallace Fund has released a digitized copy of a very rare biographical work about Wallace - George Kinman's booklet "A Great Hertfordian", which was published in 1914, the year after Wallace died. To download a copy go to the following page: http://wallacefund.info/great-hertfordian. This booklet is probably the first ever biography of Wallace that is not an article in a journal and it seems to have been written with the ulterior motive of raising money to build a Wallace Laboratory at Wallace's old school, Hertford Grammar School, where Kinman was Headmaster. I don't know whether the lab was ever built, but I expect not, seeing as WWI started in 1914 and people had more important things to think about. WWI also put paid to the 'original' Wallace Memorial Fund's plan, to raise money to produce a large marble statue of Wallace for the Natural History Museum in London (NHM), which would have matched the existing statues of Darwin and Huxley - see http://wallacefund.info/just-how-famous-was-alfred-russel-wallace.

Kinman was Headmaster of Hertford Grammar School (now named Richard Hale School) from 1905 to 1927, the year he died (see http://www.richard-hale-association.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=172&Itemid=93). Since he died more than 70 years ago his booklet on Wallace is now out of copyright.

Interestingly there are two letters from Kinman to Wallace's son William in the Wallace Family Archive at the NHM which relate to a donation which William made to the School of two large paintings his father produced to illustrate his lectures (see http://wallacefund.info/wallace-artifacts-uk-institutions-and-societies). Unfortunately like a lot of the artifacts which William presented to various organisations, these paintings have not been found.

The Wallace Fund thanks Wallace's grandson John, for allowing us to scan his copy of Kinman's booklet.