One of the principle figures of turn of the century anti-Darwinian evolutionism, William Bateson (1861-1926) was a professor at Cambridge University for 23 years before leaving to become first director of the John Innes Horticultural Institute (1910-1926). Developing a unique "vibratory theory" of organismal variability during the 1890s that envisioned evolutionary change as a discontinuous process, Bateson became well known as the first English advocate of the recently rediscovered theories of Gregor Mendel. For a man inclined to drama and disputation in science, it was Bateson's family life that took on the airs of Greek tragedy. The two linear feet of correspondence, diaries, and photographs that comprise the Bateson Family Papers provide valuable insight into the social milieu of the Batesons and their decidedly unorthodox upper middle class academic life, as well as their responses to the tragic deaths of two of their sons.