DARWIN, CharlesBiblio.com
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1877réf. 164452London: John Murray 1877. Presentation copy inscribed in Darwin's own hand First edition presentation copy inscribed on the title page "With the compliments of the author". The inscription is in Darwin's own hand rather than one of Murray's clerks. Different Forms of Flowers was published in a first edition of 1250 copies on 9 July 1877. There was only a single issue with the publisher's catalogue dated either January or March 1877 here the latter without priority. Darwin explained in his autobiography that "this book consists chiefly of the several papers on heterostyled flowers originally published by the Linnean Society corrected with much new matter added together with observations on some other cases in which the same plant bears two kinds of flowers. As before remarked no little discovery of mine ever gave me so much pleasure as the making out the meaning of heterostyled flowers" Life and Letters I p. 78. Freeman remarks that "had Darwin not chosen such genetically complex examples he might have approached more nearly to an understanding of the laws of particulate inheritance". Regardless it remains a seminal text on plant reproduction adaptation and evolution. It was translated into French and German during Darwin's lifetime followed by four further languages after his death. Octavo. 15 woodcut illustrations and 38 tables within text. Publisher's 32-page catalogue dated March 1877 at rear. Original green cloth spine lettered in gilt decorative bands at ends in gilt covers blocked in blind dark brown coated endpapers Simpson & Renshaw binder's ticket on rear pastedown. Housed in a dark green quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Spine ends gently bumped cloth bright binding very discreetly restored and recoloured endpapers slightly faded previous ownership signature on dedication page subsequently erased a handful of neat pencil marks annotation to p. 1 translating the title into French marginal crosses and lines to a few other pp. faint semicircular damp mark running through upper margins of first c.140 pages else the contents notably clean publisher's catalogue lightly foxed towards end: a near-fine copy. Freeman 1277; Norman 602. Francis Darwin ed. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin 1887. hardcover
1859réf. 51915London: John Murray 1859. First edition. 8vo. iii-x 502 28 pp bound without the half title but with all the advertisement leaves barring the final two. Early 20th century green full morocco spine with raised bands twin gilt lettered red labels marbled endpapers bookplate of K.F. Russell to the front pastedown and with a long note in his hand on the flyleaf describing the volume's provenance. Folding table mounted on linen. Slight sunning to the spine an attractive copy. The first printing of one of the most important books in the history of scientific thought. "Darwin not only drew an entirely new picture of the workings of organic nature; he revolutionised our methods of thinking and our outlook on the natural order of things. the theory of evolution became with Darwin an interpretation of nature and eventually a causal theory affecting every department of scientific research" Printing and the Mind of Man 344. Kenneth Fitzpatrick Russell 1911-87 was an eminent Australian academic. He was made Chair of Anatomy and Medical History by the University of Melbourne in 1969 having previously been conferred with a DLitt by them - an exceptional award for a science graduate. In 1963 he published "British Anatomy 1525-1800: A Bibliography" a testament to his erudition and one of the standard works on the subject. Russell's handwritten note to the front of the volume states that he bought it in the bookshop Quaine's of Melbourne in 1935. He found the original covers in a parlous state with the spine and upper cover missing and the rear board torn in half this damage clearly also accounting for the absence of the half title and the final advertisement leaves. Russell notes that he had the volume rebound thus by the binder Green paying slightly more for the restoration work than he had done for the book itself. Freeman 373 and pp. 75-77. With the misprint "speceies" on page 20 and the full whale-bear story to page 184. The first page of the advertisements is dated June 1859 as required. London: John Murray unknown
1873réf. 141586London: Henry S. King & Co 1873. First edition association copy of famed English philosopher Herbert Spencer's classic work on the evolution of society; presented and inscribed by him to Charles Darwin. Octavo original publisher's cloth with gilt titles to the spine dark green endpapers. Association copy inscribed by the author on the title page "Charles Darwin with the Author's kind regards." English philosopher biologist sociologist and anthropologist Herbert Spencer invented the expression "survival of the fittest" which he coined in his Principles of Biology 1864 after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species 1859. A description of the mechanism of natural selection in Principles of Biology Spencer drew parallels between his own economic theories and Darwin's biological ones: "This survival of the fittest which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection' or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life." Darwin responded positively to Alfred Russel Wallace's suggestion of using Spencer's new phrase "survival of the fittest" as an alternative to "natural selection" and adopted the phrase in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication published in 1868. In On the Origin of Species he introduced the phrase in the fifth edition published in 1869 intending it to mean "better designed for an immediate local environment" Gould. Darwin wrote on page 6 of The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication published in 1868 "This preservation during the battle for life of varieties which possess any advantage in structure constitution or instinct I have called Natural Selection; and Mr. Herbert Spencer has well expressed the same idea by the Survival of the Fittest. The term 'natural selection' is in some respects a bad one as it seems to imply conscious choice; but this will be disregarded after a little familiarity." He defended his analogy as similar to language used in chemistry and to astronomers depicting the "attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets" or the way in which "agriculturists speak of man making domestic races by his power of selection." Spencer and Darwin were occasional correspondents and would regularly send each other copies of their latest works. Accompanied by an autograph letter signed by Charles Darwin's great grandson Edward Darwin gifting the book to a relative dated November 27th 1969. In very good condition. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box by the Harcourt Bindery. Books from Darwin's library are very rare to the market. Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world biological organisms the human mind and human culture and societies. “It is a function that no one has performed since” DSB. During his lifetime he was considered "the single most famous European intellectual" Eriksen 37. "The only other English philosopher to have achieved anything like such widespread popularity was Bertrand Russell and that was in the 20th century" Richards. Spencer's philosophies were heavily influenced by Darwin he cites Darwin several times in this book and references On the Origin of Species as "one of the most influential scientific publications of recent times." Given the primacy which Spencer placed on evolution his sociology might be described as social Darwinism mixed with Lamarckism. However despite its popularity this view of Spencer's sociology is mistaken. While his political and ethical writings had themes consistent with social Darwinism such themes are absent in Spencer's sociological works which focus on how processes of societal growth and differentiation lead to changing degrees of complexity in social organization. The evolutionary progression from simple undifferentiated homogeneity to complex differentiated heterogeneity was exemplified Spencer argued by the development of society. He developed a theory of two types of society the militant and the industrial which corresponded to this evolutionary progression. Militant society structured around relationships of hierarchy and obedience was simple and undifferentiated; industrial society based on voluntary contractually assumed social obligations was complex and differentiated. Society which Spencer conceptualised as a 'social organism' evolved from the simpler state to the more complex according to the universal law of evolution. Moreover industrial society was the direct descendant of the ideal society developed in Social Statics although Spencer now equivocated over whether the evolution of society would result in anarchism as he had first believed or whether it pointed to a continued role for the state albeit one reduced to the minimal functions of the enforcement of contracts and external defense. Henry S. King & Co hardcover
1880réf. 1104181880. London: John Murray 1880. 8vo x 592 32 ads dated May 1878 pp. Illustrated with 196 in-text woodcuts. Original green blind-stamped cloth backstrip titled in gilt brown coated endpapers hinges cracked a little wear to crown and foot of backstrip text block edges but not pages stained an unsophisticated copy. § § First edition first issue inscribed in Charles Darwin's hand "Elizabeth Darwin From her Father." Presentation copies from Darwin in his own hand are exceptionally rare most presentation copies were inscribed "from the author" by the publisher; a copy inscribed to a family member by Darwin himself is extraordinarily so. Elizabeth Darwin known as Bessy was Charles and Emma Darwin's youngest daughter and perhaps the most enigmatic of all their ten children. She is remembered as a quiet soul who lived in the family home until the death of her mother and then in a cottage on her own near her three brothers until her death in 1926. The book which Darwin has inscribed to her was written with the assistance of her brother Francis who had himself become an accomplished botanist. It is an extension of Darwin's earlier work on movement in climbing plants showing that the same mechanisms hold true for flowering plants in general. It was well reviewed and immediately sold 1500 copies. Darwin was an exceptionally affectionate father whose anxious feelings for his own children greatly spurred his study of inherited characteristics and of evolution. He and his wife Emma were first cousins a genetic liability that tormented him. This book written in partnership with one of his children and presented to another is a potent testament to the intertwining of scientific genius and fatherhood that so characterized Darwin and catalyzed his momentous career. Books inscribed by Darwin to his children are extremely rare on the market. The last such book at auction - a copy of The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex inscribed by Darwin to his daughter Henrietta who had edited the book - sold for £90000 at Sotheby's in 2015. unknown
1859réf. 184317London: John Murray 1859. Ushering in a new era of thought about the nature of man First edition of "the most influential scientific work of the 19th century" Horblit and "certainly the most important biological book ever written" Freeman. The initial 1250 copies of Darwin's magnum opus prompted an intellectual revolution comparable to that of Newton or Copernicus. While recognizable theories of evolution had been developing since at least the mid-1750s the Origin introduces the critical mechanism of natural selection to explain the direction of the process. When married with Mendelian genetics natural selection became the foundation of modern evolutionary theory: "every modern discussion of man's future the population explosion the struggle for existence the purpose of man and the universe and man's place in nature rests on Darwin" Mayr pp. vii-xxviii. Octavo 187 x 114 mm. Folding diagram lithographed by W. West. Bound with half-title and without publisher's advertisements as often. Near-contemporary green half calf spine and covers decorated in gilt spine with dark red calf label marbled sides endpapers and edges. Housed in custom green half morocco cloth box. Ornithological bookplate of the zoologist Brunsdon Yapp 1909-1990 author of a study of bird illustrations in medieval texts. Infrequent 20th-century pencil annotations to margins. Light wear faint ghosting to front endpapers minor browning and foxing to contents short closed tears to upper margin of O10 and S2 the latter touching text and short split to fold of diagram: a very good copy. Dibner 199; Freeman 373; Garrison-Morton 220; Grolier/Horblit 23b; Norman 593; Printing and the Mind of Man 344b. Ernst Mayr introduction to the Harvard University facsimile edition 1964. hardcover
1859réf. 372885London: John Murray 1859. First Edition one of only 1250 copies. 1 vols. 8vo. Bound with half-title and without publisher's adverts. Folding diagram lithographed by W. West. Late 19th-century half brown morocco by Zaehnsdorf spine lettered and ruled in gilt raised bands marbled sides and endpapers top edge gilt brown silk bookmarker. Red morocco book label of Valentine Hollingsworth 1883-1942. Front joint repaired. Light rubbing slight darkening to spine a few light spots of foxing to preliminaries but otherwise crisp and clean tiny closed tear at foot of title page folding diagram with short closed tear and neat repair at foot: a very good smartly bound copy. First Edition one of only 1250 copies. 1 vols. 8vo. "The most important single work in science brought man to his true place in nature" Heralds of Science 199. Darwin "revolutionized our methods of thinking and our outlook on the natural order of things. The recognition that constant change is the order of the universe had been finally established and a vast step forward in the uniformity of nature had been taken" PMM 344. "The publication of the Origin of Species ushered in a new era in our thinking about the nature of man. The intellectual revolution it caused and the impact it had on man's concept of himself and the world were greater than those caused by the works of Copernicus Newton and the great physicists of more recent times. Every modern discussion of man's future the population explosion the struggle for existence the purpose of man and the universe and man's place in nature rests on Darwin" Mayr. Freeman 373; PMM 344; Norman 593; Garrison-Morton 220; Grolier/Horblit 23b; Brent Charles Darwin p. 427 John Murray unknown
1835réf. 6395Cambridge: the University Press for the Cambridge Philosophical Society 1835. First edition. First edition very rare of Darwin's first separately printed work - the thirty-one-page pamphlet in which John Stevens Henslow Cambridge Regius Professor of Botany and the mentor who had placed him aboard the Beagle printed extracts from ten of Darwin's letters from South America for private distribution to the Philosophical Society at Cambridge on 1 December 1835. Darwin was then in the South Pacific and would not learn for six months that the pamphlet existed. Extracts had already been read aloud - at the Cambridge Philosophical Society on 16 November and two days later at the Geological Society of London by Adam Sedgwick with Charles Lyell serving his first term as President in the audience. By the time the Beagle docked at Falmouth in October 1836 his reputation had been made in his absence. This is the document by which Darwin was first introduced to the scientific community - twenty-four years before the Origin of Species a career before the books that would carry his name around the world. . The Pamphlet That Made Darwin's Reputation. First edition very rare of Darwin's first separately printed work - the thirty-one-page pamphlet in which John Stevens Henslow Cambridge Regius Professor of Botany Darwin's mentor and the man who had secured him his berth on the Beagle printed selected passages from Darwin's letters home for private distribution to the Fellows of the Philosophical Society at Cambridge on 1 December 1835. Darwin was then in the South Pacific had just called at Tahiti and would not learn for almost half a year that the pamphlet existed. He did not see a copy until October 1836 when he was back in England. In those intervening months the pamphlet circulated rapidly through the British geological establishment and the verdict was already being returned. This is the document by which the public naturalist of the following quarter-century was first introduced to the scientific community. It appeared twenty-four years before the Origin of Species thirty-six before the Descent of Man and a career before the books which would carry his name around the world. It is the first entry in Freeman's bibliography. The pamphlet was the printed form of extracts that had already been read aloud. On 16 November 1835 at the Cambridge Philosophical Society's meeting chaired by the president the Rev. Dr William Clark Henslow read extracts from ten of Darwin's letters from South America with remarks contributed by Adam Sedgwick. Two days later at the Geological Society of London in Somerset House Sedgwick read further extracts and introduced them as a very great mass of information connected with almost every branch of natural history - from which he would for the present occasion confine himself to the geology. The Athenaeum summarised the Geological Society session in its number of 21 November and by Caroline Darwin's transcription of that report Sedgwick had given specific notice of her brother's observations on the tertiary formation of Patagonia & Chili & on the changes of level between land & sea and of the description of the Uspallata Pass with its tertiary and igneous alternations and its veins of true granite gold and other metals. Charles Lyell then serving his first term as President of the Geological Society 1835-1837 was in the audience for this reading; so was Henslow's friend Leonard Jenyns the Cambridgeshire naturalist who had himself been offered and declined the Beagle berth four years earlier. By the time the Beagle docked at Falmouth in early October 1836 Darwin's scientific reputation in Britain had been made in his absence. Henslow was then thirty-nine a Regius Professor of Botany who had previously held the chair of mineralogy and was in several respects the architect of Cambridge natural science in the 1830s. He had been a founder of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1819 and had taught the botany course that Darwin took at Christ's College for three years running. He had conducted the Saturday field excursions at which Darwin had done most of his undergraduate natural-history apprenticeship and had presided over the Friday Evening scientific soirées in his own drawing-room at which Darwin as an undergraduate met Sedgwick Whewell Peacock and the senior figures of the University's scientific community. Darwin himself in the Autobiography of 1876 described the friendship with Henslow as the circumstance that had influenced his whole career more than any other and remembered being called by some of the dons "the man who walks with Henslow." In August 1831 the Beaufort-Peacock-FitzRoy search for a gentleman naturalist to sail on the Beagle reached Henslow's desk Peacock writing from Cambridge on behalf of his friend Francis Beaufort Hydrographer of the Navy. Henslow first considered going himself declined on account of his wife and family and wrote the letter of recommendation that determined the rest of Darwin's life. Darwin sailed from Plymouth on 27 December 1831 as the self-funded naturalist of the Beagle's second survey voyage at a salary of nothing and at the age of twenty-two. Henslow had proposed him for the berth - the best qualified person he knew of - and in the five years following was the recipient of Darwin's scientific letters from the field ten of which survive as the source of the present extracts. The topics the letters ranged over were already those of the later career: the geology of the South American coast from Patagonia to the equator fossil mammals from the pampas the Megatherium bones that Richard Owen would soon describe the gradual uplift of the Chilean shore that Darwin had witnessed directly in the Concepción earthquake of February 1835 the transect across the Andes from Mendoza to the Pacific at which he had found marine shells at twelve thousand feet and petrified trees standing upright through successive sandstones. The emphasis is geological throughout. The South American palaeontology that would drive his incipient evolutionary thinking is present only in outline and the word species does not yet appear as a theoretical term. But the habit of sustained observation under a unifying theory - Charles Lyell's uniformitarian Principles of Geology whose three volumes Darwin had taken with him on the Beagle and whose second volume had reached him at Montevideo in 1832 - is already formed and the pamphlet is the first public trace of its formation. The immediate precipitating occasion was a field-geological one. Darwin's long letter of April 1835 describing the cross-Cordillera transect at the Puquenas and Portillo passes and the upright petrified trees at Uspallata had reached Henslow at Cambridge in the autumn of 1835 and had been at once seen by Sedgwick to be a finding of the first importance. After the 16 November Cambridge reading and the 18 November Geological Society reading the Council of the Cambridge Philosophical Society resolved on 30 November that the printing of certain extracts from Mr Darwin's correspondence be submitted to Mr Whewell Mr Peacock and Prof. Henslow - William Whewell Fellow of Trinity College who had resigned the chair of mineralogy in 1832 and two years earlier had coined the word scientist George Peacock Fellow and tutor at Trinity who would be appointed Lowndean Professor of Astronomy two years later and Henslow himself. The pamphlet was in press the following day. Its preface dated 1 December 1835 and signed by Henslow explains the occasion and carries a disclaimer. The opinions expressed are presented only as first thoughts of a traveller respecting what he sees before he has had time to collate his notes and examine his collections with the attention necessary for scientific accuracy. Darwin for his part was for some weeks horrified. The first hint of the pamphlet reached him at the Cape of Good Hope on 1 June 1836 in a letter of 29 January from his youngest sister Catherine mentioning in passing the little books with the Extracts from your Letters. He replied from the Cape on 3 June confessing himself "a good deal horrified" by the sentence protesting that he had written to Henslow in the same careless manner as to his own family and that to print what had been written without care or accuracy was to play with edge tools. He could only quote the Spaniard's proverb - no hay remedio there is no remedy. The horror was converted into a different feeling when on the next leg northwards a November 1835 letter from his sister Susan caught up with him at Ascension Island in mid-July with the news that Sedgwick himself had predicted he would have a great name among the naturalists of Europe. Darwin later recalled the effect of reading Sedgwick's estimate on a volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic: he had clambered over the mountains of Ascension with a bounding step and made the volcanic rocks resound under his geological hammer. The Darwin of the 1835 pamphlet however is still entirely a geologist. His first theoretical book would be a geological one - The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs 1842 developed from the theory he had worked out in the South Pacific of the subsidence that had produced the oceanic atolls; his second and third the geological volumes of the Beagle series 1844 1846 would remain within the Lyellian framework. The transition from the Lyellian geologist of 1835 to the evolutionary biologist of 1859 is the subject of the two decades between the pamphlet and the Origin of Species. The present pamphlet is where that career begins in print and it begins as the career of a field geologist already competent enough for Sedgwick at Cambridge and Lyell in London to take his observations seriously the moment they arrived. The evolutionary Darwin of the Origin begins his printed career as the geological Darwin whose Andes transect is the climax of the letters excerpted here. Its influence in its own year was out of all proportion to its size. It was most consequentially through the pamphlet that Charles Lyell took Darwin seriously as a geologist. Presiding over the Geological Society from the chair at Somerset House on 18 November 1835 Lyell heard Darwin's Chilean and Andean observations as the first empirical vindication of the Principles of Geology from a working field geologist in the Southern Hemisphere: direct observation of ongoing elevation of the land along the Chilean coast of marine shells at twelve thousand feet in the Andes of tertiary formations at altitudes where on the Lyellian account one would expect to find them. Lyell wrote to Henslow early in 1836 asking for every scrap of further Darwin material that came in. When the Beagle finally docked at Falmouth in October 1836 Lyell called on Darwin within a fortnight of his arrival in London. The friendship that followed - Lyell's unreserved support for Darwin's early geological work of 1838-1846 Lyell's reluctant acceptance in 1859 of the argument of the Origin after twenty years of friendly resistance to it Darwin's description of Lyell in the Autobiography as the man to whom he owed more scientifically than any other - begins at this reading of the pamphlet in November 1835. Henslow for his part sent copies to the Darwin family on Christmas Day 1835 with a note hoping that Darwin would soon be back to take his position among the first Naturalists of the day. Dr Robert Waring Darwin the traveller's father who had had doubts about his son's career in natural history read it through in one sitting. Caroline Darwin wrote to her brother on 29 December: their father "did not move from his seat till he had read every word" had been very much gratified had liked the simple clear way in which the information was conveyed and had particularly admired the frank and unhackneyed manner of his son's writing. He wrote at once to Henslow to thank him observing that his son's letters carried their own natural good-humoured energy. Earlier at the end of November their sister Susan had also forwarded the news that Sedgwick writing to Dr Butler at Shrewsbury had reported that the former schoolboy was doing admirably in South America and would take his place among the naturalists of Europe: a prediction carrying particular weight in a household that had once worried its son might become an idle man. Dr Darwin gave copies of the pamphlet to friends and relatives; Henslow sent six to Samuel Butler headmaster at Shrewsbury where Darwin had been at school; Tom Eyton and William Darwin Fox received further copies. By the end of January 1836 the pamphlet was already circulating well beyond the membership of the Cambridge Philosophical Society for whom it had been produced. Henslow's selection is quotation not summary. It runs through ten of Darwin's letters from the voyage from 18 May 1832 written at Botafogo near Rio de Janeiro four months after leaving England to 18 April 1835 the long letter from Valparaíso describing the double transect of the Andes. A further letter of 12 August 1835 from Lima was received by Henslow too late for inclusion. The sequence moves from the tropical forests of Brazil through the pampas and Patagonia to Tierra del Fuego and the Falklands; up the Chilean coast; and across the Andes. Embedded in the geology and the zoology are the first printed passages of Darwin as a writer - the observations of the Fuegian Yahgan in contrast to the anglicised Jemmy Button aboard the Beagle; the description at Rio de Janeiro of the young naturalist whose servant Syms Covington had just been taught to skin birds and quadrupeds; the ironic grumble from Montevideo that Alcide d'Orbigny might collect the cream of the good things first; the note again from Montevideo of Juan Manuel de Rosas's war of extermination against the Indians; and everywhere the sustained geological attention that would be elaborated for the next decade in the Beagle geological volumes. It is the voice of the mature Darwin in formation. The edition is among the rarest of Darwin items. Freeman states that fewer than one hundred copies were printed and that although it has always been assumed that the pamphlet was issued to members of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in December 1835 he had not seen a copy with a dated ownership inscription or accession stamp for that year; the surviving evidence for a December 1835 issue is a letter from Dr Robert Waring Darwin to Henslow of 28 December 1835. A proof copy with some twenty pencil corrections appeared at Sotheby's on 13 March 1973 lot 404; since then according to American Book Prices Current only four copies have sold at auction the most recent at Christie's New York on 19 June 2014 sale 2861 $221000. One of the recorded auction copies had been presented by Henslow himself to the Ashmolean Natural History Society at Oxford. Institutional holdings are concentrated in Cambridge the Cambridge Philosophical Society's own copy the University Library and Christ's College where Darwin had been an undergraduate with further copies at the British Library the American Philosophical Society and Down House where Darwin's own copy is preserved. A close facsimile was issued by the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1960 with a new preface by Sydney Smith reproducing the Society's minutes of 16 and 30 November 1835 to mark the centenary of the Origin of Species; that reprint and the original are easily distinguished and cause no confusion. References: Norman 583 - Garrison-Morton 8920 - Freeman 1 - Frederick Burkhardt ed. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin vol. 1: 1821-1836 Cambridge 1985 pp. 468-472 and 507-511 - Janet Browne Charles Darwin: Voyaging New York 1995 pp. 340-343 - Susannah Gibson The Spirit of Inquiry: How One Extraordinary Society Shaped Modern Science Oxford 2019 pp. 86-92. 8vo 217 × 142 mm: pp. 1-3 4-31 1 blank; a single gathering of 16 leaves signatures A-B8; printed by the University Press Cambridge on wove paper edges untrimmed. Original plain pale grey paper wrappers as issued sewn without printed lettering. A remarkably fresh copy of a famously fragile pamphlet: wrappers bright with only light age-toning and a few faint surface marks; the preface leaf lightly foxed at the head; the text block clean and crisp throughout. . [the University Press for the Cambridge Philosophical Society] unknown
1859réf. 69648London: John Murray 1859. Full Description: DARWIN Charles. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London John Murray 1859. First edition first issue. With two quotations on p. ii. Octavo 7 3/4 x 4 7/8 inches; 198 x 125 mm. ix 1 1-502 32 pp. Publisher's advertisements dated June 1859. One folding diagram. Original green diagonal wave-grain cloth decoratively stamped in blind on covers. Spine decorated and lettered in gilt. Brown coated endpapers. Corners very slightly rubbed. Bookplate to front pastedown. Front inner hinge cracked but firm rear inner hinge just starting. Tiny short tears to top and bottom of spine from shelf-wear else fine. A clean fresh and bright copy. Housed in a custom green cloth clamshell. Overall a near fine good copy of Darwin's greatest achievement that created a revolution in biology and in almost every department of thought. Housed in a full green morocco clamshell case. One of the most influential scientific works of the nineteenth century On the Origina of Species was and still is one of the most controversial. In it "Darwin not only drew an entirely new picture of the workings of organic nature; he revolutionized our methods of thinking and our outlook on the natural order of things. The recognition that constant change is the order of the universe had been finally established and a vast step forward in the uniformity of nature had been taken" Printing and the Mind of Man. Dibner 199. Freeman 373 "the most important biological book ever written". Garrison and Morton 220. Grolier 100 English 96. Grolier/Horblit 23b "the most influential scientific work of the nineteenth century". Printing and the Mind of Man 344b. HBS 69648. $325000. John Murray unknown
1859réf. 116380London: John Murray 1859. First edition of "certainly the most important biological book ever written" Freeman one of 1250 copies. Octavo bound in original cloth half-title one folding lithographed diagram without advertisements. In very good condition with cracks to inner hinges and a touch of shelfwear. Housed in a custom clamshell box. A fine example of this landmark work. Darwin “revolutionized our methods of thinking and our outlook on the natural order of things. The recognition that constant change is the order of the universe had been finally established and a vast step forward in the uniformity of nature had been taken” PMM 344. “Without question a watershed work in the history of modern life sciences Darwin’s Origin elaborated a proposition that species slowly evolve from common ancestors through the mechanism of natural selection. As he himself expected Darwin’s theory became and continues to be in some circles the object of intense controversy” American Philosophical Society. “The five years of Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle were the most important event in Darwin’s intellectual life and in the history of biological science. Darwin sailed with no formal training. He returned a hard-headed man of science… The experiences of his five years in the Beagle how he dealt with them and what they led to built up into a process of epoch-making importance in the history of thought” PMM. John Murray hardcover
réf. 48245London : John Murray 1859. First edition with two quotations only from Whewell and Bacon on the verso of the half-title leaf. Octavo original publisher's gilt-lettered green cloth by Edmonds & Remnants of London with their binder's ticket to rear pastedown very slightly bruised at head and foot of spine a couple of very small marks; original endpapers early owner's name to front pastedown; pp. ix blank 502 32 publisher's catalogue dated June 1859 folding lithographed plate; upper hinge slightly cracked preliminaries a little foxed but a fine clean and fresh copy. Housed in a custom quarter-morocco box. An entirely unrestored crisp and sharp copy of one of the most significant publications in the history of science. Freeman 373 '. the most important biological work ever written.'; Dibner 199 '. the most important single work in science.'; Printing & the Mind of Man 344b '. revolutionized our methods of thinking and our outlook on the natural order of things. The recognition that constant change is the order of the universe had been finally established and a vast step forward in the uniformity of nature had been taken.' This fine first edition example of On the origin of species was awarded Best Book at Firsts London 2026. hardcover
1859réf. 172148London: John Murray 1859. Presented to his botanical counterpart in France who prefigured Darwin's theory of adaptation First edition presentation copy inscribed on the front free endpaper in a secretarial hand "Dr Weddell Bagnères de Bigorre from the author". This is a premier copy: Weddell is one of the earliest named recipients on Darwin's list of presentation copies. Darwin and Weddell who had comparable experience as scientists aboard major expeditions to South America exchanged findings plant specimens and presentation copies throughout their careers. Though born in England Hugh Algernon Weddell 1819-1877 was raised in France and qualified as a physician there in 1841. He joined the Castelnau scientific expedition to South America the following year aged 23 before leaving in 1845 to concentrate on his own plant collecting in the Andes. He returned to France in 1848 having discovered coca and cinchona among other plants and collected over 5000 specimens. These travels and a later trip to Bolivia established him as a specialist in South American flora. He served as an assistant naturalist at the Muséum d'histoire naturelle in Paris from 1850 to 1857 before settling in Bagnères-de-Bigorre and later in Poitiers. Histoire naturelle des quinquinas ou monographie du genre 1849 the two-volume Chloris Andina 1855-57 and Monographie de la famille des Urticés 1856 are among his most noted publications. "Weddell was the first to demonstrate scientifically the medical importance of coca. as well as the dangers attached to its misuse. His work contributed to the cultivation of cinchona in the Dutch East Indies and other tropical regions and earned him the Order of the Netherlands Lion in 1855 a rare distinction for a foreigner. His observations on the fossils of Tarija in Bolivia and on the different varieties of cinchona led him to elaborate between 1850 and 1860 a theory of adaptation that anticipated Darwin at least in France" Natural History Museum. In 1858 Darwin and Hooker consulted the new data in Weddell's 1856 monograph to calculate the number of species and varieties in large and small genera. Weddell sent Darwin a copy of his paper on the Cynomorium plant in 1860 and two years later Darwin responded in kind by gifting Weddell a copy of Orchids on page 19 of which he cites Weddell's work on the "naturally produced" hybrids of Aceras. Weddell is also included on Darwin's presentation list for "Two forms in species of Linum" 1863 which prompted a written correspondence on pollination mechanisms. In his letter of 13 May 1863 DCP-LETT-4161 Weddell apologizes to Darwin for being unable to find the requested samples of Ophrys apifera bee orchids in his local area: "If at any future period I am more lucky I shall not fail to observe a sufficient number of them as respects their manner of fertilisation and make you acquainted with the results". The final exchange between Darwin and Weddell concerned membership of the Académie des Sciences. Darwin applied twice to become a corresponding member of its botanical section but it was not until after Weddell's death that the Académie offered the newly vacant place to him DCP-LETT-11640A. Darwin drafted his list of recipients of presentation copies of the Origin between August and October 1859. Weddell appears on the first page of the list as "Dr. Weddell Bagneres de Bigorres Haute Pyrenees" Correspondence Vol. 8 p. 555. "There are no known author's presentation copies of the first edition inscribed in Darwin's hand" Norman. Subsequent provenance: Louis Devergne likely the archpriest 1891-1941 at Loudon some 40 miles from Poitiers where Weddell died his neat ink ownership inscription on front free endpaper; private French collector. Octavo. Folding diagram lithographed by W. West. 32-page publisher's catalogue at rear dated June 1859. Original green cloth spine lettered and decorated in gilt Freeman variant b no priority brown endpapers. Housed in a green quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Extremities rubbed and bumped cloth and gilt bright small patch of dampstain at upper edge of rear cover with resulting area visible at gutter of rear endpapers contents notably clean bar very occasional faint spotting and soiling neatly repaired closed tear at fore edge of G5 tiny nick at fore edge of P5: a fine copy. Freeman 373; Garrison-Morton 220; Horblit 23b; Norman 593; Printing and the Mind of Man 344b. "Appendix III - Presentation copies of Origin" in Frederick Burkhardt & James Second eds The Correspondence of Charles Darwin Volume 8: 1860 1993. hardcover
