Charles Darwin’s “stolen” notebooks have been mysteriously returned to Cambridge University, 22 years after they were last seen.

The small leather-bound books, which include the scientist’s “tree of life” sketch, are worth millions of pounds. Their return comes 15 months after the BBC first reported their disappearance and the library launched a global search for them.
“I’m overjoyed,” says Dr. Jessica Gardner, the university’s librarian.

She gives a big grin as she delivers the news. She can’t seem to stop grinning. “They’re safe, they’re in good shape, and they’ve arrived at their destination.” But it’s a real mystery as to who returned the two postcard-sized notepads. They were placed in a bright pink gift bag with the original blue box the notebooks were kept in and a plain brown envelope, and they were left anonymously.

A short message was printed on it: “Librarian, Happy Easter X.”

The two notebooks were tightly wrapped in cling film inside. Outside Dr. Gardner’s office, the package had been left on the floor in a public area of the library with no CCTV.

Dr. Gardner describes her reaction to seeing the bag and its contents for the first time on March 9 as “shaking.” “However, I was cautious because we couldn’t be certain until we could unwrap them.”

Between discovering the package and the police granting permission to open the cling film, examine the notebooks, and confirm they were genuine, there was a five-day wait.

The notepads were made after Darwin returned from the Galapagos Islands in the late 1830s. He drew a spindly sketch of a tree on one page, which helped inspire his theory of evolution and would become a central theory in his groundbreaking work On the Origin of Species more than 20 years later. The manuscripts were last seen in November 2000, when they were removed from the library’s special collections strong room to be photographed due to a “internal request.”

They were discovered to be missing only two months later during a routine check. Initially, librarians believed they had been returned to the wrong location in the massive university library, which houses over 10 million books, maps, and manuscripts. Despite numerous searches, the notebooks were never found, and Dr. Gardner concluded in 2020 that they had most likely been stolen. She alerted the authorities and Interpol.

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