Editing Alfred Russel Wallace (section)

=== Early life ===
Alfred Russel Wallace was born on 8 January 1823 in [[Llanbadoc]], Monmouthshire.<!--Whether Monmouthshire was in Wales in 1872 is debatable. Please leave this alone; this page is not the place for this debate-->{{efn|name=fn1}}{{sfn|Wilson|2000|p=1}} He was the eighth of nine children born to Mary Anne Wallace ({{née|Greenell}}) and Thomas Vere Wallace. His mother was English, while his father was of Scottish ancestry. His family claimed a connection to [[William Wallace]], a leader of Scottish forces during the [[Wars of Scottish Independence]] in the 13th century.<ref name=WKU_bio/>

Wallace's father graduated in law but never practised it. He owned some income-generating property, but bad investments and failed business ventures resulted in a steady deterioration of the family's financial position. Wallace's mother was from a middle-class family of [[Hertford]],<ref name="WKU_bio">{{cite web |url=https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/BIOG.htm |title=Alfred Russel Wallace: Capsule Biography |last=Smith |first=Charles H.  |author-link=Charles H. Smith (historian)|website=The Alfred Russel Wallace Page |access-date=25 May 2022}}</ref> to which place his family moved when Wallace was five years old. He attended [[Richard Hale School|Hertford Grammar School]] until 1837, when he reached the age of 14, the normal leaving age for a pupil not going on to university.<ref name="Wyhe bio sketch">{{cite web |last=van Wyhe |first=John |author-link=John van Wyhe |title=Alfred Russel Wallace. A biographical sketch |website=Wallace Online | url=http://wallace-online.org/Wallace-Bio-Sketch_John_van_Wyhe.html |access-date=22 September 2022 }}</ref>{{sfn|Wilson|2000|pp=6–10}}

[[File:Wallace Mechanics Institute (crop).jpg|thumb|left|upright|A photograph from Wallace's autobiography shows the building Wallace and his brother John designed and built for the Neath [[Mechanics' Institute]].|alt=a building designed by Wallace and his brother]]

Wallace then moved to London to board with his older brother John, a 19-year-old apprentice builder. This was a stopgap measure until William, his oldest brother, was ready to take him on as an apprentice [[surveying|surveyor]]. While in London, Alfred attended lectures and read books at the [[London Mechanics Institute]]. Here he was exposed to the radical political ideas of the Welsh social reformer [[Robert Owen]] and of the English-born political theorist [[Thomas Paine]]. He left London in 1837 to live with William and work as his apprentice for six years. They moved repeatedly to different places in Mid-Wales. Then at the end of 1839, they moved to [[Kington, Herefordshire]], near the Welsh border, before eventually settling at [[Neath]] in Wales. Between 1840 and 1843, Wallace worked as a land surveyor in the countryside of the west of England and Wales.{{sfn|Raby|2002|pp=77–78}}{{sfn|Slotten|2004|pp=11–14}} The [[natural history]] of his surroundings aroused his interest; from 1841 he collected flowers and plants as an amateur [[botanist]].<ref name="Wyhe bio sketch" />

One result of Wallace's early travels is a modern controversy about his nationality. Since he was born in [[Monmouthshire (historic)|Monmouthshire]], some sources have considered him to be Welsh.<ref>{{cite web |title=28. Alfred Russel Wallace |publisher=100 Welsh heroes |url=http://www.100welshheroes.com/en/biography/alfredrussellwallace |access-date=23 September 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100124191414/http://www.100welshheroes.com/en/biography/alfredrussellwallace |archive-date=24 January 2010}}</ref> Other historians have questioned this because neither of his parents were Welsh, his family only briefly lived in Monmouthshire, the Welsh people Wallace knew in his childhood considered him to be English, and because he consistently referred to himself as English rather than Welsh. One Wallace scholar has stated that the most reasonable interpretation is therefore that he was an Englishman born in Wales.<ref name="Smith"/>

In 1843 Wallace's father died, and a decline in demand for surveying meant William's business no longer had work available.<ref name="Wyhe bio sketch" /> For a short time Wallace was unemployed, then early in 1844 he was engaged by the Collegiate School in [[Leicester]] to teach drawing, mapmaking, and surveying.{{sfn|Shermer|2002|p=53}}{{sfn|Slotten|2004|pp=22–26}} He had already read [[George Combe]]'s ''[[The Constitution of Man]]'', and after [[Spencer Timothy Hall|Spencer Hall]] lectured on [[Animal magnetism|mesmerism]], Wallace as well as some of the older pupils tried it out. Wallace spent many hours at the town library in Leicester; he read ''[[An Essay on the Principle of Population]]'' by [[Thomas Robert Malthus]], [[Alexander von Humboldt]]'s ''Personal Narrative'', Darwin's ''Journal'' (''[[The Voyage of the Beagle]]''), and [[Charles Lyell]]'s ''[[Principles of Geology]]''.<ref name="Wyhe bio sketch" />{{sfn|Wallace|1905a|pp=[http://wallace-online.org/content/frameset?pageseq=275&itemID=S729.1&viewtype=side 232–235], [http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=side&itemID=A237.1&pageseq=289 256]}} One evening Wallace met the entomologist [[Henry Walter Bates|Henry Bates]], who was 19 years old, and had published an 1843 paper on beetles in the journal ''Zoologist''. He befriended Wallace and started him collecting insects.{{sfn|Shermer|2002|p=53}}{{sfn|Slotten|2004|pp=22–26}}

When Wallace's brother William died in March 1845, Wallace left his teaching position to assume control of his brother's firm in Neath, but his brother John and he were unable to make the business work. After a few months, he found work as a civil engineer for a nearby firm that was working on a survey for a proposed railway in the [[River Neath|Vale of Neath]]. Wallace's work on the survey was largely outdoors in the countryside, allowing him to indulge his new passion for collecting insects. Wallace persuaded his brother John to join him in starting another architecture and civil engineering firm. It carried out projects including the design of a building for the Neath [[Mechanics' Institute]], founded in 1843.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.tlysau.org.uk/cgi-bin/anw/search2?coll_id=11281&inst_id=35&term=Neath |title=Neath Mechanics' Institute |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131110014026/http://www.tlysau.org.uk/cgi-bin/anw/search2?coll_id=11281&inst_id=35&term=Neath |archive-date=10 November 2013 |publisher=[[Swansea University]] |access-date=21 April 2013}}</ref>  During this period, he exchanged letters with Bates about books. By the end of 1845, Wallace was convinced by [[Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802)|Robert Chambers]]'s anonymously published treatise on [[orthogenesis|progressive development]], ''[[Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation]]'', but he found Bates was more critical.{{sfn|Wallace|1905a|p=[https://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=293&itemID=A237.1&viewtype=text 254]}}{{sfn|Shermer|2002|p=65}} Wallace re-read Darwin's ''Journal'', and on 11 April 1846 wrote "As the Journal of a scientific traveller, it is second only to Humboldt's 'Personal Narrative'—as a work of general interest, perhaps superior to it."{{sfn|Wallace|1905a|p=[https://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=295&itemID=A237.1&viewtype=text 256]}}

William Jevons, the founder of the Neath institute, was impressed by Wallace and persuaded him to give lectures there on science and engineering. In the autumn of 1846, Wallace and his brother John purchased a cottage near Neath, where they lived with their mother and sister Fanny.{{sfn|Slotten|2004|pp=26–29}}{{sfn|Wilson|2000|pp=19–20}}