I stumbled upon Annie's Box during a visit to Darwin's home, in the countryside of Kent some 16 miles from London, while doing research on the restoration of Down House for an article for HMS Beagle. There, perched on the most prominent shelf of the Down House gift shop, sat the new volume. The image of Charles Darwin in middle age, along with a picture of his young daughter Annie, graced the cover; "Charles Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution," announced the subtitle. I picked up the book and flipped through its 300-plus pages, making a mental note to purchase a copy on my return home.

It wasn't until later in the day, while interviewing Nick Biddle, garden curator at Down House, that I began to understand that there is something very special about this book. As we walked about the grounds, Biddle repeatedly referred to Annie's Box as he elaborated on the Darwins' family life and described plans for restoring the Down House gardens to their splendor in Darwin's day.

What makes Annie's Box special is the unique source material on which Keynes, a great-great-grandson of Darwin (his grandmother was Charles Darwin's granddaughter), based much of the book. Charles and Emma Darwin had a large family: 10 children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. Five of those surviving children wrote accounts of their upbringing in the Darwin household. Keynes drew heavily from these in writing his book, providing an intimate view into the Darwin household that is not found in other tellings of Darwin's life.

Annie, who died after a lingering illness at the age of 10, was the Darwins' second child. Today, the best guess is that she succumbed to tuberculosis, although at the time her death was recorded as due to the the rather nebulous "bilious fever with typhoid character."

Charles and Emma were devastated by the loss of Annie. Each dealt with the grief in a different way. Charles resorted to writing, producing a moving memorial to Annie. He then buried himself in his work on his species theory. But he grieved over Annie's death for the remainder of his life and feared that her inheritance of his "wretched digestion" may have been a major contributing factor to her fatal illness.

Emma, pregnant as usual and preparing for the birth of her next child, collected mementos of Annie's short life and carefully stored them away in what had been her young daughter's writing case. "Annie's box" is stuffed with the trivial items of her daily routine: letters, a piece of embroidery, a lock of brown hair, and trinkets, along with the quills, steel nibs, sealing wax, and seals typical of a writing case. Today, Annie's box, together with its contents, is on display at Down House, tied with a yellow ribbon added by Emma for safekeeping 150 years ago.

Despite the sad episode that provides the title for Keynes's book, it is overall a joyous tale of the daily life of the Darwin clan. Charles and Emma believed in a philosophy of child rearing based on the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Children, they believed, are naturally good. They rejected the prevailing Christian view that children, being corrupted by sin from birth, are inherently evil, a condition that must be rectified by a disciplined upbringing. The Darwins were indulgent parents. Education, in their view, was a process of self-discovery; they saw little value in learning by rote memory. As a result, their children learned to read when they chose, and they learned to think for themselves.

Another consequence of the Darwins'indulgent attitude toward their children was a household often in chaos. "The children are growing so quite out of all rule in the drawing room, jumping on everything and butting like young bulls at every chair and sofa, that I am going to have the dining room fire lighted tomorrow and keep them out of the drawing room. I declare a month of such wear would spoil everything," wrote Charles to Emma. Despite these sentiments, Charles and Emma ultimately made a deliberate decision to not worry about their new furniture becoming shabby. "So chairs and other furniture used to get piled up for railways and coaches, just as the fancy took them . . . I believe we have all been much the happier in consequence," wrote Emma.

Keynes's book paints a picture of Charles Darwin as a father that is in direct contrast to the stereotypical image of the aloof, distant, and rigid Victorian paterfamilias. Darwin's children remember him as warm, caring, and deeply involved with the everyday minutiae of their lives; a father who found great joy in playing. "According to Francis [Darwin], his father's body was very hairy; the children would put their hands inside his shirt and he would growl like a bear at us," writes Keynes. Other Darwin children recalled that their father used the pictures in his scientific books to entertain them. They referred to one of his books as the "monkey book." Charles made up a story to go along with the pictures; it became a favorite among the children and was told over and over. He even recalled one of the songs he had heard sung by a Tahitian girl during his voyage on the Beagle and sang it for the children.

Charles Darwin, always the scientist, took great delight in closely observing his children as infants and wrote extensive and detailed notes on their development. His interest in early childhood development may have been one of the reasons for having so many children, although large families were not unusual at the time. His son Horace was born when Emma was 43, yet Charles still wanted another child. "Emma has been very neglectful of late and we have not had a child for more than one whole year," wrote Charles. Several years later Emma did bear him another son, Charles Waring Darwin.

Keynes's book also weaves an account of Darwin's scientific accomplishments into the story of his family life. This, however, adds nothing to the volumes that have already been written on the subject. Keynes's real contribution is an intimate and detailed look into the everyday family life of the Darwin household. These are often little things, such as the fact that the Darwins referred to the two sides of the Sandwalk, the walking path around a copse planted by the great scientist himself, as the "light side" and the "dark side." One path is very shady as it winds through the copse, while the other, which runs alongside the copse, is very sunny. If such details delight you, then you will be delighted by Randal Keynes's addition to the voluminous literature on the life and work of Charles Darwin.