Charles DarwinBiblio.com
7 646 résultats
1893réf. 10123Fifteen volume set. Westminster Edition/ Authorized Edition. Limited to 1000 copies in which this is number 16. Half brown morocco with five raised bands and gilt particulars to spine. Top edge gilt; lightly deckle fore-edge. Previous owner's bookplate neatly to the front pastedown to each volume. Slight repairs to some spine heads. Puncture to rear board with indentations through p. 208 of "Formation of Vegetable Mould." Minor scuffing to corners but overall an attractive set. 6 x 8.5 in 15 x 21.5 cm D. Appleton and Company hardcover
1866réf. 42820890FOURTH EDITION. Fifteen hundred copies were printed. "It was again extensively altered and it was in this one that the date if the first edition as given on the verso of the half title is corrected from October 1st to November 24th" Freeman. On the Origin of Species is "certainly the greatest biological book ever written" Freeman and "the most important single work in science" Dibner. Darwin's theory of the origin of species by means of natural selection arose out of his studies in the 1830s during and after the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. From 1831 to 1836 Darwin sailed around the world on the Beagle. During this five-year voyage Darwin and the Beagle visited the Galapagos Islands Brazil Argentina Tierra del Fuego Chile Peru Tahiti Australia New Zealand and other islands and countries finally returning to England by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope. Darwin observed "It appears to me that nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist than a journey in distant countries." The voyage of the Beagle was "the most important event in Darwin's intellectual life and in the history of biological science. Darwin sailed with no formal scientific training. He returned a hard-headed man of science knowing the importance of evidence almost convinced that species had not always been as they were since creation but had undergone change. … The experiences of his five years … and what they led to built up into a process of epoch-making importance in the history of thought" DSB. Over the coming thirty years Darwin refined the ideas that had germinated aboard the Beagle and finally published them in On the Origin of Species. Darwin concluded his book "There is grandeur in this view of life with its several powers having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this plan has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved." Darwin's ideas about evolution and natural selection are the underpinnings of modern biological science. Moreover they have given us a new way of viewing and talking about the world. "Darwin not only not only drew an entirely new picture of the workings of organic nature; he revolutionized our methods of thinking and our outlook on the order of natural things. The recognition that constant change is the order of the universe had finally been established" Printing and the Mind of Man 344b. Provenance: contemporary inscription "Adamson The Towers Didsbury." Daniel Adamson was an English engineer boiler manufacturer and driving force behind the Manchester Ship Canal in the 1880s. His home the Towers is sometimes called the Calendar House for its 365 windows 52 doors and 12 chimneys. Freeman 385. John Murray hardcover
1874réf. 6679London: John Murray 1874. Second edition. First edition first issue of the book in which Darwin finally gave his public account of two ideas he had withheld from the Origin: the descent of Homo sapiens and - his more original contribution - the mechanism of sexual selection. On page 2 of Volume I the word evolution appears the first appearance of the word in any Darwin work a year before the sixth edition of the Origin. The descent of man made him famous. Sexual selection required his readers to credit birds fishes and insects with something like aesthetic judgment - that females choosing generation after generation had driven ornament that natural selection alone could not explain. Wallace would not accept it and most of the scientific community followed him. Sexual selection remained a neglected corner of Darwinism for a century until Trivers 1972 Zahavi 1975 and Hamilton and Zuk 1982 vindicated female choice and placed it at the centre of evolutionary biology. . What Darwin Left Out of the Origin. First edition first issue of the book in which Darwin finally gave his public account of two ideas he had withheld from the Origin of Species: the descent of Homo sapiens from pre-existing forms and - his more original and more contested contribution - the mechanism of sexual selection. The Origin had deliberately excluded man from its argument "light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" and had mentioned sexual selection only briefly as a special case within natural selection. Twelve years later with the evolutionary argument secured in the scientific literature and the public polemics largely past Darwin set out the two positions he had kept in reserve. The first made him famous; the second neglected for a century was resurrected only in the 1970s and is now one of the central research programmes in evolutionary biology. The twelve-year delay was not accidental. Darwin had been collecting notes on human descent since the Beagle years of the 1830s but had withheld them for strategic reasons. He had written to Wallace in December 1857 that he would avoid the subject of man as surrounded by too many prejudices even while admitting that it was the highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist. By 1871 the climate had changed. Huxley's Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature 1863 had done much of the defensive work; Lyell's Antiquity of Man 1863 had established deep human prehistory; and Haeckel's Generelle Morphologie 1866 had pushed the evolutionary argument onto the Continent and drawn the first explicit phylogenies of the human line. The Descent therefore arrived not as the opening of the controversy but as Darwin's own statement delivered at a moment when the main resistance had already been absorbed. The storm that had greeted the Origin did not repeat itself in 1871; Darwin wrote to a friend that he was surprised to find everyone talking about the book without being shocked and took this as a measure of the increasing liberality of the age. The first volume opens with a page that would prove diagnostic. On page 2 in the introduction Darwin refers to the principle of gradual evolution - the first appearance of the word evolution in any of his published works a year before its appearance in the sixth edition of the Origin. The word had hitherto belonged to embryology and to Herbert Spencer; Darwin had avoided it in the Origin in favour of descent with modification and natural selection partly because evolution still carried its older sense of the unfolding of a preformed germ and partly because Spencer's usage had given it metaphysical baggage Darwin preferred not to inherit. That he now allowed the word onto his own page marks a small but real shift in nomenclature: from 1871 forward the subject would be called evolution and the Descent is where Darwin formally joined the convention he had helped to make inevitable. The first volume and the opening chapters of the second are devoted to the argument for the descent of man from a pre-existing form. The strategy is cumulative: no single piece of evidence is decisive but each addition narrows the space of alternative explanations. Darwin begins with the homologies of bodily structure between man and the other mammals - the bones of the hand the arrangement of the viscera the musculature - arguing that these resemblances are inexplicable except as the signature of common descent. He proceeds to embryonic development where he reproduces the famous side-by-side comparison of a human embryo with that of a dog the Ecker-Bischoff figure Vol. I p. 15 arguing that in their early stages the two are practically indistinguishable and that embryology therefore preserves in miniature the shared ancestry of the vertebrate body plan. He turns to rudimentary organs - the vermiform appendix the musculus auricularis the coccyx the tubercle on the outer edge of the ear - as fossil evidence carried in the living body structures that make sense only on the assumption that they once served a function in a remoter ancestor. And he finally addresses the mental faculties arguing from comparative psychology - the affection of dogs the jealousy of birds the rudimentary reason observable in the higher apes - that there is no unbridgeable gap between human and animal cognition but rather a difference of degree. The argument leans on his cousin Francis Galton's Hereditary Genius 1869 which had established to Darwin's satisfaction that mental and moral qualities were inherited along the same channels as physical ones and could therefore be brought within the selective argument. The conclusion to the first part is stated with characteristic caution: that man is descended from some less highly organised form and that the grounds upon which the conclusion rests will Darwin writes never be shaken. A long chapter on the races of man mounts an argument against the polygenist position - then widely held particularly in the American anthropological literature after Morton and Nott - that the human races constitute separate species with separate origins. Darwin argues from the fertility of crosses from shared mental and moral characteristics and from the continuous rather than discrete distribution of racial traits for a single origin of Homo sapiens. His ethnographic scaffolding carries the prejudices of its period; his conclusion however is monogenist and anti-polygenist and in the politics of nineteenth-century race science that was the liberal position decisively opposed to the scientific racism then institutionalised in the American schools. The moral sense receives its own treatment. Against those who held that conscience and altruism must be divinely implanted because they could not be derived from self-interest Darwin argues that the social instincts - present in rudimentary form throughout the higher animals - provide a natural foundation for ethics. An animal that lives in a group is selected for behaviours that sustain the group; over generations those behaviours become internalised as moral feelings. It is the earliest sustained naturalistic account of ethics in the evolutionary literature and it is precisely the argument that Wallace a recent convert to spiritualism refused to accept. With the descent of man established Darwin turns in the remainder of the second volume to his second and originally his primary subject: sexual selection. This is the book's most sustained theoretical innovation. Darwin had been troubled since the 1850s by a class of biological traits that natural selection could not easily explain - elaborate male ornament ornate plumage antlers display behaviours bright colours - which often appeared to reduce the bearer's chances of survival rather than enhance them. The peacock's tail had become his standing example of the problem. Writing to Asa Gray in April 1860 only months after the publication of the Origin Darwin confessed that "the sight of a feather in a peacock's tail . makes me sick." The remark is only half a joke. It identifies the precise class of phenomena that resisted the argument of the Origin and it locates the theoretical problem that would occupy him for the next eleven years. The solution developed in the Descent was that a second mechanism distinct from natural selection was at work: selection not for survival but for reproductive success acting through mate choice and intrasexual competition. Sexual selection in Darwin's formulation has two components. The first - male-male combat - accounts for weapons and body size: antlers horns spurs large canines the fighting armature of rival males. The second - female choice - accounts for ornament: song colour display behaviour elaborate plumage. The implication was radical. Female preference exercised generation after generation was sufficient to drive the evolution of male traits that would otherwise be selected against. Darwin was asking his readers to believe that birds fishes and insects were in effect making aesthetic judgments and that those judgments had consequences at the species level. The comparative tour that occupies the bulk of Volume II - insects Chapters X-XI fishes amphibians and reptiles Chapter XII containing the figure of Plecostomus barbatus a South American siluroid catfish in which the male's mouth and interoperculum are fringed with a beard of stiff scale-like hairs of which the female shews hardly a trace birds Chapters XIII-XVI by far the longest treatment taking in courtship display vocal performance plumage and the geographical distribution of ornament and mammals Chapters XVII-XX - is in effect a six-hundred-page argument that this aesthetic mechanism is real widespread and responsible for most of the secondary sexual characters in the animal kingdom. Darwin's eldest daughter Henrietta Emma Darwin had read the manuscript and suggested corrections of style; in a letter of 28 March 1871 Darwin called her his very dear coadjutor and fellow-labourer and the book's argumentative clarity owes something to her editorial hand. The wood-engraved illustrations were drawn from life by the zoological artist T. W. Wood whose earlier work for Alfred Russel Wallace's Malay Archipelago 1869 had made him the best-placed draughtsman in England for the natural-history figures the Descent required; his economical diagnostic style suited the comparative method of the second volume where the illustrations carry much of the argumentative weight. The corrected proofs went to Murray on 15 January 1871 and the first issue of 2500 copies appeared on 24 February priced at £1/4/- the two-volume set. Demand was immediate: within three weeks a reprint had been ordered and by the end of March 1871 some 4500 copies were in print earning Darwin close to £1500. The religious press was hostile - the Edinburgh Review the Dublin Review and the Quarterly Review all published long attacks - but the scientific periodicals took the book more or less on its own terms. The most damaging review was the Quarterly's published anonymously in July 1871: Darwin guessed correctly that the author was St George Jackson Mivart Huxley's disillusioned former pupil whose own On the Genesis of Species January 1871 had already mounted a Catholic-metaphysical critique of natural selection. Mivart argued that the Descent would unsettle half-educated classes and licence moral relativism; Darwin felt the sting told Huxley that he expected to be viewed as the most despicable of men and was relieved when Huxley counter-attacked in the Contemporary Review that autumn. The episode permanently soured the Darwin-Mivart relationship and figures prominently in the 1874 second edition where Darwin silently corrected several of Mivart's specific objections without naming him. Translations appeared quickly: German Carus 1871 the two-volume Stuttgart edition that Darwin came to regard as authoritative and used when correcting his own text for later editions Dutch Hartogh Heys van Zouteveen 1871-2 French Moulinié 1872 Italian Russian and Swedish all within three years of the first printing. By the time Darwin died in 1882 the Descent had reached a wider international readership than any of his other works with the sole exception of the Origin itself. The present copy is the first issue of February 1871 distinguished from the second issue March 1871 2000 copies by four diagnostic features all of which are present and correct. Among them is the separately tipped-in Postscript leaf inserted after the Contents of Volume II on which Darwin acknowledges "a serious and unfortunate error" in his argument on sexual selection affecting Volume I pp. 297-9 and Volume II pp. 161 and 237. Darwin had realised too late to correct the printed text that he had conflated two distinct phenomena: the coincidence between the onset of sexual maturity and the appearance of secondary sexual characters which he had attributed to sexual selection and which he now recognised was better explained by natural selection operating at a correspondingly late life-stage. The Postscript does not rewrite the passages; it flags them and the opening of the passage on p. 297 of Volume I was entirely reset for the second issue. The first-issue leaves are therefore witnesses to Darwin's thinking in the act of correcting itself. Institutional copies of the first issue are securely held at Cambridge University Library Darwin's own copy in the Darwin Archive the British Library the Bodleian the American Museum of Natural History the Linda Hall Library the Huntington and the Norman Library lot 599 in the 1998 Christie's dispersal; auction appearances of complete first-issue sets in publisher's green cloth are not common at the better grades with the standard reference points the Garden 1989 Sotheby's catalogue the Norman 1998 Christie's sale and the Nordmann 2006 Christie's Paris dispersal. Freeman's four-feature collation is the operative test for assigning a given copy to the first issue rather than to the second. The present copy carries all four features and an indistinct pencil monogram apparently EH at the head of the Volume I half-title the only ownership mark in either volume; the marginal annotations and underlinings are the unsigned hand of a careful contemporary reader who worked through both volumes and who paused with particular attention at the bird and mammal chapters of Volume II. Wallace would not accept female choice. The disagreement had been building for years. Darwin and Wallace had corresponded intensively through 1867 and 1868 about the coloration of female birds the selective meaning of sexual dimorphism and - the point that eventually separated them - whether animals were capable of the kind of preference that Darwin's theory required. Wallace's 1868 Westminster Review essay on ornament already hedged: he would allow that bright colour could indicate vigour but not that it could be chosen for beauty alone. In his 15 March 1871 Academy review of the Descent he broke with Darwin publicly and in the papers that followed through the 1870s he argued that apparent ornament was really cryptic colouration or species recognition misread and that female choice - which required crediting animals with something like aesthetic sense - was implausible. Most of the scientific community followed Wallace. Sexual selection remained a neglected and faintly embarrassing corner of Darwinism for most of a century mentioned in textbooks as a historical footnote but rarely taken up as a research programme. It was resurrected only in the 1970s when Robert Trivers's 1972 parental-investment paper gave female choice a rigorous economic foundation Amotz Zahavi's 1975 handicap principle explained why costly ornaments could function as honest signals of genetic quality and W. D. Hamilton and Marlene Zuk's 1982 Science paper connected ornament to parasite resistance. Sexual selection is now one of the central research programmes in evolutionary biology and Darwin's six hundred pages are read as a founding document rather than a historical curiosity. References: Printing and the Mind of Man 169 - Garrison-Morton 170 - Norman 599 - Freeman 937 - R. B. Freeman The Works of Charles Darwin: An Annotated Bibliographical Handlist 2nd ed. Folkestone 1977 pp. 128-31 - van Wyhe ed. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online F937. Two volumes 8vo 191 × 125 mm. Vol. I: pp. viii 423 1 16 pp. publisher's advertisements dated January 1871; Vol. II: pp. viii ii: errata on verso of title leaf and tipped-in Postscript leaf 475 1 16 pp. publisher's advertisements dated January 1871. First issue: the verso of the Vol. II title leaf carries the printed errata list seventeen corrections for Vol. I and eight for Vol. II replaced in the second issue by a list of nine other works by Darwin; the separately tipped-in Postscript leaf pp. ix-x is inserted after the Contents of Vol. II; the verso of the Vol. II half-title carries the printer's note William Clowes and Sons Stamford Street and Charing Cross blank in the second issue; and the first word on p. 297 of Vol. I reads transmitted replaced by When in the second issue after the pages had been reset. Numerous wood-engraved illustrations in the text. Publisher's original green diaper-pattern vertical-rib cloth spines lettered and decorated in gilt with foliate ornaments at head and foot "LONDON / JOHN MURRAY" at the foot of each spine blind-stamped panelled boards yellow endpapers. Faint pencil ownership monogram at the head of the Vol. I half-title indistinct. Occasional pencil underlinings and small marginal annotations in a contemporary hand throughout. Rubbing and light wear to extremities and spine caps; minor chipping to a few leaf edges; foxing to text block edges and occasional light internal foxing; text block of Vol. II split at p. 161 but holding; entirely unrestored. . John Murray unknown
réf. 145367Rare autograph from Charles Darwin boldly signed "With M. Darwin's Best Compliments." Matted and framed with a portrait of Darwin. The entire piece measures 11.9 inches by 9 inches. An exceptional presentation. Charles Darwin was an English naturalist geologist and biologist best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species. By the 1870s the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact. However many favored competing explanations and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences explaining the diversity of life. unknown
1871réf. 2980London: John Murray 1871. First edition. Original cloth. Very Good. FIRST EDITION FIRST ISSUE one of only 2500 copies in original cloth of Darwin's seminal work on the evolution of man. "This is really two works. The first demolished the theory that the universe was created for Man while in the second Darwin presented a mass of evidence in support of his earlier hypothesis regarding sexual selection. In the Origin Darwin had avoided discussing the place occupied by homo sapiens in the scheme of natural selection stating only that `light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.' Twelve years later he made good his promise with The Descent of Man in which he compared man's physical and psychological characteristics to similar traits in apes and other animals showing how even man's mind and moral sense could have developed through evolutionary processes. In discussing man's ancestry Darwin did not claim that man was directly descended from apes as we know them today but stated simply that the extent ancestors of homo sapiens would have to be classified among the primates; however this statement as misinterpreted by the popular press caused a furor second only to that raised by the Origin" Norman 599. "The word `evolution' occurs for the first time in any of Darwin's works on page 2 of the first volume of the first edition" Freeman p.129. London: John Murray 1871. Octavo original green cloth; custom box. Two volumes. First issue with second volume with errata on verso of title and Postscript leaf tipped in after Contents. With 16-page publishers' catalog at end of each volume dated January 1871 first issue. Nearly invisible expert repair to upper hinge of volume 1; small blindstamp on front free endpapers; foxing to last few leaves of ads in both volumes as often; small hole likely paper flaw and line of soiling to volume 2 title page. A very good copy in original cloth. John Murray unknown
1871réf. 142104London: John Murray 1871. First edition first issue of both volumes with "transmitted" the first word on p. 297 in the first volume; in the second the printer's note on the verso of the half-title errata on title verso and the postscript leaf after p. viii. Both volumes have the January ads. Octavo two volumes original green cloth with gilt titles and tooling to the spine. In excellent condition with rubbing to the extremities with the spine gilt bright. The book in its first edition contains two parts the descent of man itself and selection in relation to sex. The word 'evolution' occurs Volume I p. 2 for the first time in any of Darwin's works" Freeman 128-29. It also contains Darwin's important and then controversial statement that the extinct ancestors of Homo Sapiens would have been classified among the primates. "One of the ten most significant books ever written" Sigmund Freud. Freeman 937; Garrison-Morton 170; Printing and the Mind of Man 169; Rieber 121. John Murray hardcover
1871réf. 140397London: John Murray 1871. First edition of both volumes with "transmitted" the first word on p. 297 in the first volume; in the second the printer's note on the verso of the half-title errata on title verso and the postscript leaf after p. viii. both volumes have the January ads. Octavo two volumes original green cloth with gilt titles and tooling to the spine. In excellent condition with light rubbing and wear to the extremities. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. The book in its first edition contains two parts the descent of man itself and selection in relation to sex. The word 'evolution' occurs Volume I p. 2 for the first time in any of Darwin's works" Freeman 128-29. It also contains Darwin's important and then controversial statement that the extinct ancestors of Homo Sapiens would have been classified among the primates. "One of the ten most significant books ever written" Sigmund Freud. Freeman 937; Garrison-Morton 170; Printing and the Mind of Man 169; Rieber 121. John Murray hardcover
réf. 70866Fine illustrated and antiquarian Natural history . 2nd. Ed. 2nd. Issue. Pub. John Murray London. 1860. pp.ix 502 with half-title fold-out lithographic diagram plus 32-page John Murray catalogue dated Jan. 1860. 8vo. Hardback. With Fifth Thousand on title-page as called for by Freeman. This copy has benefited from some professional conservation. Internally the blank fore-margins of six leaves incl. half and full-titles have been neatly strengthened with conservation material and the blank corner of two leaves repaired. Internal hinges have been sympathetically strengthened retaining the original endpapers. The fore-edges of the free-endpapers show a little wear o/w. the contents are very clean and nr. fine. With original binders ticket of Edmonds and Remnants London. The spine ends of the original decorated green cloth binding have been relaid - the binding being nicely bright and in thor. vg. condition. A very pleasing copy. Freeman 376 binding variant a. The 1250 copies of the first edition of 1859 were sold out almost immediately and this revised second edition identified by fifth thousand on the title-page was published just three months later. In a very important addition to the text Darwin here tries to reconcile the theory of evolution with the traditional conception of Gods creation of the world. Fine illustrated and antiquarian Natural history hardcover
1871réf. 21219841871. London: John Murray. 1871. 8vo. Original green cloth covers embossed in blind spines titled in gilt; pp. 423 16pp. adverts. and pp. 475 16pp. adverts. with 76 wood-engraved illustrations; cloth a little mottled light foxing to prelims and ads previous owner's pencilled signature to half-titles otherwise very clean hinges strong very good.First edition first issue with Murray's advertisements at the end of each volume dated ""Jan. 1871"". Vol. I p. 297 starts with ""transmitted"". Vol. II has the inserted postscript and has errata on the verso of the title-page. Freeman points out that ""the word evolution occurs for the first time in any of Darwin's works on page 2 of the first volume.""In this work Darwin expounded fully his theory of sexual selection and discussed at length the link he recognised between human and ape lineage. This piece further enhanced Darwin's fame - if not his popularity - and is one of the most significant works in the evolutionary debate. It addresses the issue of human evolution in terms that Darwin had shied away from in On the Origin of Species knowing how controversial his ideas would be. By 1871 he had the confidence and stature to publicise this crucially important part of his theory of natural selection.Freeman 937. hardcover
réf. 50698London : printed by W. Clowes and Sons for John Murray 1861. Third edition. Octavo original green cloth by Edmonds & Remnants London retaining their ticket on lower pastedown boards blocked in blind with rules enclosing foliate designs and central panel spine lettered in gilt corners slightly bumped light bumping to head and foot of spine binding variant B no preference without full point period after “MURRAY” in spine imprint tan endpapers bookplate of George John Armytage F.S.A. to front pastedown pp. xix; blank 538; 2 - publisher's catalogue folding lithographic plate by William West after Darwin internally clean a fine and crisp copy of the third edition. The first edition of 1859 a great rarity is described in Freeman as "". the most important biological work ever written.""; Dibner "". the most important single work in science.""; Printing & the Mind of Man "". 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"". The third edition of which 2000 copies were printed contains substantial revisions by Darwin unlike the second edition which was essentially a reprint of the first. The third edition 'was extensively altered and is of interest for the addition of a table of differences between it and the second edition a table which occurs in each subsequent edition and also for the addition of the historical sketch. which was written to satisfy complaints that Darwin had not sufficiently considered his predecessors in the general theory of evolution. there is also a postscript on page xii. concerning a review of the earlier editions by Asa Gray' Freeman p. 78. A very fine example. Freeman 381 binding variant B without full point period after “MURRAY” in spine imprint there being no preference as to variant. Â hardcover
1860réf. 96973London: John Murray 1860. Rare second edition second issue in Freeman's binding variant "a" of Darwin's magnum opus. Freeman 376; Norman 594. Octavo original publisher's green cloth. In excellent condition with the spine gilt bright contemporary owner's signature to the title marginalia on pages 72 and 132. A nice example. 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. Darwin wrote in his diary that all 1250 copies of the first edition published on November 24 were sold on the first day; however more accurately nearly all of the edition had been sold to the trade immediately with the exception of personal copies set aside for Darwin and review copies. John Murray hardcover books
réf. 67910Fine illustrated and antiquarian Natural history . 1st. Ed. 3rd. Iss. Pub. London Henry Colburn. 1840. pp.i-iv vii viii-xiv 615 pp.609-629 addenda plus 2 fold out charts at pp.xiv and pp.538 4 text woodcuts and 16-pages of Colburn adverts dated August 1839. 8vo. Hardback. Internally nr. fine with minor scattered spotting to contents and a neat repair to one fold-out plate. Original decorated blue cloth with spine professionally relaid and neat restoration to the imprint. Loosely inserted on The Athenaeum Pall Mall London headed paper is a handwritten note dated 22/04/1947 by the then purchaser of this copy in which he explains who he bought the book from. A most pleasing copy. Freeman 12. Darwins first published book is undoubtedly the most often read and stands second only to On the origin of species as the most often printed. It is an important travel book in its own right and its relation to the background of his evolutionary ideas has often been stressed Freeman. It first appeared in its own right in 1839. We offer for sale here a copy of the final third issue of the first edition and it is identical to the second except that the conjugate half-title and title leaves have been reprinted. This is the scarcest of the three but in my experience the maps are always inserted in the text. Some copies also have the 16 pp inserted advertisements of August 1839. Freeman. Fine illustrated and antiquarian Natural history hardcover
1846réf. MS0029bvi279 pages with frontispiece folding map 5 folding plates one folding hand-colored lithographic geological cross-section by G.B. Sowerby Junior figures and index. Lacks the 32 pages of advertisements which is often the case. Octavo 9" x 5 1/2" bound in half leather over marbled boards with five raised spine bands and black label in gilt lettering. Freeman 273; Norman 857; Sabin 18646 First edition. Published in 1846 Geological Observations on South America is the third and final part of Charles Darwin's geological trilogy detailing the findings from his famous five-year voyage aboard the HMS Beagle under the command of Captain Robert FitzRoy. The trilogy consists of Part 1: The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs 1842; Part 2: Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands 1844; and Part 3: Geological Observations on South America 1846 — dedicated entirely to the continental mainland where Darwin spent the majority of his land-based exploration. It was not until 1851 that an edition of all three geological works was first published. The third and last of Darwin's geological reports on the Beagle voyage. In it he described the pampas the plateaux and the Andes showing how they had been gradually pushed up in the way Lyell had surmised without the intervention of catastrophic events. The descriptions of secondary fossil shells from South America illustrated in Sowerby's plates are by Edward Forbes. Darwin argued that vast landforms—including the pampas plateaus and the Andes mountain chain—were formed by slow continuous upward pressure over immense periods strongly supporting Charles Lyell's uniformitarian geology rather than sudden catastrophic events. Seismic and Volcanic History: Detailed logs and analysis of South American earthquakes volcanic rock mineralogy lava granite and deformed metamorphic strata. Fossil Contributions: Features specialized descriptions of tertiary and secondary fossil shells contributed by paleontologists G. B. Sowerby and Edward Forbes. Included original engraved folding map and hand-colored geological cross-sections illustrating the terrain and strata of the continent. Condition; Rebound without publisher's 32p pages of advertisement. Folding map repaired but with some tears. hand-colored plate with tears at folds some bumping and rubbing at the corners boards lightly scuffed some light toning plate IV with some edge wear else very good of a scarce title. Stewart & Murray for Smith, Elder & Company hardcover
réf. 47285London : printed by W. Clowes and Sons for John Murray 1860. Second edition second state fifth thousand. Octavo original green cloth by Edmonds & Remnants London retaining their ticket on lower pastedown boards blocked in blind with rules enclosing foliate designs and central panel spine gilt recased with original spine laid down repairs to head and foot of spine upper joint cracked light bumping to corners brown endpapers with contemporary gift inscription dated 1860 pp. ix 1 - instructions to the binder 502 32 publisher's catalogue dated January 1860 folding lithographic plate by William West after Darwin occasional light foxing lower hinge a little cracked small pen note on p. 1 mentioning the publication date of the first printing a good copy of the second edition. The first edition of 1859 a great rarity is described in Freeman as "". the most important biological work ever written.""; Dibner "". the most important single work in science.""; Printing & the Mind of Man "". 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"". The second edition was issued in two states the difference being the addition of the text 'Fifth thousand' to the title page. Three thousand copies of the second edition were printed three months after the first edition of 1250 copies sold out in a single day. The combined number of copies which had been printed by January 1860 was now 4250 hence entering the fifth thousand. Freeman 376. Â hardcover
1865réf. WRCAM54258St. Petersburg 1865. viii5401; 3viii466pp. plus frontispiece. 12mo. Half titles. Modern half calf and marbled boards spines gilt with raised bands. Light dampstaining at top edge of a few leaves light tanning and foxing throughout. Very good. The very rare first edition in Russian of Darwin's classic scientific journal and travel account of his experiences and observations aboard the H.M.S. Beagle. "His first published book is undoubtedly the most often read and stands second only to ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES as the most often printed. It is an important travel book in its own right and its relation to the background of his evolutionary ideas has often been stressed" - Freeman. Despite recording over 250 editions of Darwin's JOURNAL and eighteen in Russian Freeman misses this initial printing translated into Russian by Elizaveta Bekatova and edited by her husband Andrei Beketov. OCLC records only one copy at the University of Toronto. FREEMAN pp.31; 52-53 ref. hardcover books
1861réf. 304713London John Murray 1861. 1861. Third edition with additions and corrections seventh thousand. 8vo. Half title page folding diagram at p. 123. 2 pages of advertisements at end. Original green cloth stamped in gilt and blind; brown coated endpapers. Binder's ticket of Edmonds & Remnants on back pastedown. A fresh bright tight copy of a book that is usually found in worn condition. No foxing. Small booksellers label on verso front free endpaper. Neat signatures of two previous owners on the half title page. Freeman 381. "The most important biological book ever written" Freeman p. 73. 3rd Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/No Jacket. London, John Murray, 1861. hardcover books
1871réf. 52438London: John Murray 1871. Darwin disliked having to open the unopened pages of books--a common aspect of many 19th century publications. For that reason he ordered a small number of presentation copies from John Murray with trimmed edges. Trimming the edges made the book blocks shorter so the original cloth bindings in which these presentation copies were issued are slightly shorter than the regular edition. John Murray unknown
1862réf. 6677Paris: Guillaumin et Cie; Victor Masson et Fils 1862. First edition. First edition in French of Darwin's Origin translated with his authorisation from the third English edition of 1861 and the most disputed of its early translations - rendered prefaced footnoted retitled and intellectually re-framed by Clémence Royer 1830-1902 the self-taught philosopher whom Darwin reading the finished book in June 1862 pronounced "one of the cleverest & oddest women in Europe." Royer's sixty-four-page preface is a manifesto - anti-clerical positivist proto-eugenic - enlisting Darwin's biology for a programme he had never endorsed. Her footnotes override his hedges; her rendering of natural selection as élection naturelle drifted toward the voluntarism he abhorred; her retitling ou des Lois du Progrès chez les êtres organisés substituted Lamarckian ascent for Darwin's competitive statistics. Darwin replaced her with Moulinié in 1873 and Barbier in 1876; but French Darwinism in its first decade was shaped as much by Royer's preface as by Darwin's text and the present book is the edition in which the two first appeared together. . First Edition in the French Translation Darwin Regretted. First edition in French of Darwin's Origin translated with his authorisation from the third English edition of 1861 and the most disputed of its early translations - rendered prefaced footnoted retitled and intellectually re-framed by Clémence Royer the self-taught philosopher economist and feminist whom Darwin reading the finished book in June 1862 pronounced "one of the cleverest & oddest women in Europe." Royer's sixty-four-page translator's preface is a manifesto: an anti-clerical positivist and proto-eugenic document that enlists Darwin's biology for a social and political programme he had never endorsed and would spend the rest of his life partly repudiating. Her footnotes run through the main text sometimes clarifying often disputing and occasionally correcting Darwin from positions he did not share. Her rendering of natural selection as élection naturelle rather than the later-standard sélection naturelle was a lexical choice he quietly detested. Her substitution of his sober subtitle - or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life - with her own progressivist formula - ou des Lois du Progrès chez les êtres organisés - was an ideological edit. Darwin had seen none of this before publication. By 1873 he had arranged a new translation by Jean-Jacques Moulinié; by 1876 a further one by Edmond Barbier. French Darwinism in its first decade was shaped as much by Royer's preface as by Darwin's text and the present book is the edition in which the two first appeared together. Darwin had had difficulty finding a French translator at all. Louise Belloc the first he approached declined on the grounds that the material was too scientific. Pierre Talandier a French political exile who had offered to undertake the work withdrew when no publisher would associate with him. Royer who was already placing her own two-volume Théorie de l'Impôt with the Parisian publishing house of Guillaumin learned of the vacancy and approached Darwin with a firm publishing agreement from Guillaumin et Cie and Victor Masson et Fils already in hand. On 10 September 1861 Darwin wrote to John Murray asking that a copy of the third English edition of the Origin be sent to her at 2 Place de la Madeleine Lausanne. What he knew of her was modest and on its face reassuring: she had delivered a course of scientific lectures in Lausanne in 1859; she had paid careful attention to Lamarck; she had corresponded with republican radicals across Europe; she had written on economics and on logic. The authorisation went forward. The French title page prints avec l'autorisation de l'Auteur in small capitals as if the phrase endorsed the whole enterprise; in fact it referred only to Darwin's permission to translate the third English edition of 1861. Royer proceeded without supervision. The absence of supervision is in retrospect the decisive error. Born in Nantes on 21 April 1830 the illegitimate daughter of Augustin-René Royer - an army captain and Bourbon legitimist - and of Joséphine-Gabrielle Audouard a Nantes seamstress she acquired her full name only when her parents married in 1837. Her earliest childhood was spent in Swiss exile her father having taken part in the 1832 rebellion to restore the Bourbon dynasty; the family returned to France on his surrender and acquittal in Orléans. She received patchy formal schooling and a year at a convent school before after her father's death in 1849 educating herself through self-study and teaching certificates. In 1854 she taught at a girls' school in Wales - acquiring the English that would later serve her for Darwin - and there encountered a religious diversity that precipitated her own drift from Catholicism. She returned to France in 1855; a year later to Lausanne where she read systematically through the municipal library. She opened a women's course in logic in 1859 followed by a forty-lesson course on the Philosophy of Nature and History in which she was already arguing a Lamarckian transformism before she had so much as heard of Darwin. She began writing for the journals of Pascal DuPrat - the French republican politician with whom she would from 1865 live openly as "wife." In 1860 her entry on tax reform took second place in the canton of Vaud's competition; her two-volume Théorie de l'Impôt was published by Guillaumin in 1862 and it was through this connection that the Origin commission reached her. Her intellectual loyalties - to Comte to the Saint-Simonians to philosophical positivism in its most anti-theological form - were formed and in print before Darwin's book arrived on her desk. She saw in it the scientific foundation her programme had been waiting for. She did not see - or more likely did not care - that Darwin's argument was narrower than the use to which she proposed to put it. Her preface running to sixty-four pages before Darwin's own Introduction begins is accordingly a document of French intellectual life as much as of Darwinian biography. It opens with the creedal sentence of nineteenth-century positivism: a profession of faith in revelation - not the Mosaic or the Christian but the permanent revelation of man to himself through the cumulative acquisition of scientific truths and the elimination of inherited errors. A survey of world history follows arranged as the progressive overcoming of religious superstition by reasoned knowledge with Zoroaster Moses Confucius Pythagoras Plato and the Catholic Fathers adduced as steps in a single ascending arc and Darwin's theory of descent with modification presented as the latest and most decisive revelation of this secular kind. Royer is explicit that Darwin's theory must displace the Mosaic account of creation that it renders natural theology untenable that it is fundamentally and irremediably heretical and that those who attempt to reconcile it with Christian doctrine are either dishonest or confused. In the second half of the preface she applies the theory to human society arguing that the struggle for life observed in nature should be allowed to run its course in human populations without the artificial protections of charity welfare and the preservation of the weak by the strong - the passage which more than any other has earned her the retrospective label of an early eugenicist. The argument is made with verve and in excellent French. It is also wholly absent from Darwin's own text. The reader of this French first edition meets Royer before meeting Darwin and a great many of those readers - Clemenceau Zola the circle around the Revue des Deux Mondes the young Gustave Le Bon - took their first impression of Darwinism from her preface. Her interventions did not end at the preface. Footnotes occur throughout the main text sometimes briefly and technically more often at length and argumentatively; where Darwin hedges she is firm; where he defers to theological sensitivities she removes the deferrals. Her choice of élection naturelle was defended on philological grounds - sélection she argued carried misleading overtones of deliberate choice - but in practice the word drifted toward a voluntarist almost teleological reading that was the opposite of Darwin's blind-statistical mechanism. Her retitling - the addition of ou des Lois du Progrès chez les êtres organisés - moved the centre of the book from the preservation of favoured races under competitive pressure to a supposed lawful ascent of organised beings an inflection Darwin took pains to resist throughout his career. Supervision had in fact been attempted: the Geneva zoologist Édouard Claparède whom Royer had enlisted for biological advice tried and failed to temper her commentary and wrote to Darwin with some exasperation describing the attempt as hopeless. The book that resulted falls into three parts: the preface the French rendering of Darwin's own Historical Sketch newly added to the third English edition of 1861 and the body of the text with Royer's notes running beneath it. Lithographed as the single illustration Darwin's branching diagram from Chapter IV was reset in Paris by the firm of Delarue preserving the fourteen geological horizons and the ancestral species A through L but carrying its captions and chapter head in French. The book was issued on 31 May 1862. When his copy reached Down House in early June Darwin read it with a growing and characteristic unease. In mid-June he sent the American botanist Asa Gray the assessment that has become the most-quoted fragment of this whole episode describing the translator as one of the cleverest and oddest women in Europe an ardent deist violently hostile to Christianity convinced that the struggle for life could be made to account for all morality politics and human nature and about to publish he predicted a strange production on exactly those subjects. The tone is recognisable. Darwin was rarely sharp about anyone; his method of expressing disapproval was to call a colleague odd or a book strange. The deeper problem was that a theory he had spent twenty years writing up with methodological caution was about to enter French intellectual life attached to Royer's philosophical programme and there was in the short term nothing he could do. A month later he would regret to Armand de Quatrefages that his translator had not known more of natural history; to Hooker that Royer corrected his own expressed doubts by appending footnotes denying that any doubt was warranted at all; to Claparède private thanks for an intervention that had plainly not worked. He could at least wait. A second edition of Royer's translation appeared in 1866 with expanded notes a new avant-propos and - in response to corrections Darwin had by now supplied - a switch from élection to sélection naturelle flagged by a defiant footnote in which Royer conceded the popular usage but declined to concede the underlying linguistic point. A third edition further revised but published without Darwin's knowledge appeared in 1870 from the same houses; by this time Darwin had issued the fourth and fifth English editions of the Origin none of whose corrections Royer had incorporated. Worse she had added to the third edition a further preface attacking the theory of pangenesis that Darwin had propounded in his Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication of 1868 - a theory with no direct bearing on the Origin at all. That was the breaking point. In late 1869 Darwin wrote to his Paris publisher C.-F. Reinwald and through him to the young Geneva naturalist Jean-Jacques Moulinié asking for a fresh translation. Moulinié began the work at the end of 1869 rendering first from the fifth English edition and then as Darwin's sixth edition appeared in 1872 incorporating its new chapter and additions as an appendix. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 and Moulinié's own illness delayed him and he died in 1872 before his translation could be published. The book appeared in 1873 from Reinwald with a prefatory letter from Darwin dated 23 September 1872 and printed in both English and French explaining the change of translator and renouncing any royalty from the new edition. Moulinié's successor at Reinwald Edmond Barbier then produced in 1876 a second fresh translation - this time from Darwin's definitive sixth English edition of 1872 - which became and has remained the standard French Origin. Royer was not finished. A fourth edition of her translation appeared from Flammarion in 1882 the year of Darwin's death; it continued to be reprinted by that house into the 1930s thirty years after Royer's own death in Paris on 6 February 1902. The book itself aside from these celebrated peculiarities of its making carries the full text of Darwin's third English edition including the Historical Sketch that Darwin had added in 1861 in response to accusations of having neglected his predecessors. It is the earliest form in which a French reader could encounter the third-edition apparatus - Lamarck Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire Erasmus Darwin Chambers Wallace and the others whom Darwin acknowledged as having anticipated one or another piece of his theory. The branching diagram of Chapter IV the only illustration survives here in the Delarue lithograph. Darwin's closing sentence - on the grandeur of the view of life with its several powers having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one - appears in Royer's French in perceptibly softened form with the divinely breathed-in creative act rendered as an impersonal first cause. Small as the adjustment is it is characteristic of her hand. Provenance: an unidentified Château de Beaulieu with its library stamp - an oval in blue ink with the legend CHÂTEAU DE BEAULIEU around the circumference and the owner's initials G. T. F. in the centre - at the upper margin of the half-title above an ink signature Beaulieu and a flourished calligraphic initial D. Several Châteaux de Beaulieu are candidates - in the Allier the Charente the Loir-et-Cher and the Mayenne among others - and the monogram G. T. F. has not yet been matched to a documented collector. The consequences for French intellectual life were considerable. The working French naturalists of the 1860s were slow to embrace Darwin: Quatrefages Milne-Edwards and Claude Bernard either ignored the book or engaged with it sceptically and the Académie des Sciences declined to elect Darwin a correspondant until 1878 and then only in botany. Part of this reluctance was the French scientific establishment's native attachment to a Lamarckian transformism which it preferred to defend rather than replace; part of it was the tendency of French Darwinism as refracted through Royer to be dismissable as anti-clerical propaganda dressed up as science. Paul Broca coined the neologism transformisme in 1868 to name the hypothesis in its Lamarck-to-Darwin arc and it is symptomatic that French readers through the 1870s continued to locate Darwin inside Lamarck's genealogy rather than outside it. Royer's progressivist framing made it harder for them to distinguish Darwin's argument from the older broader and less biologically rigorous evolutionism of Lamarck and of Herbert Spencer with which her preface actively confused it. Darwin writing to Gaston de Saporta in 1872 remarked wistfully that French opinion of his work had been formed in large part on the basis of a translation that was not his own. Royer for her part prospered in Paris. In 1870 she became the first woman elected to the Société d'Anthropologie de Paris a body founded and still led by Broca; she published her own major work Origine de l'homme et des sociétés the same year; and Ernest Renan in a phrase that became famous and eventually furnished the title of Joy Harvey's modern biography described her as almost a man of genius. The preface to the first French Origin is today reprinted as a standalone text in Geneviève Fraisse's Clémence Royer philosophe et femme de sciences of 1985 and discussed at length in Harvey's Almost a Man of Genius: Clémence Royer Feminism and Nineteenth-Century Science of 1997 where its status as a founding document of French social Darwinism - and more quietly of French feminist scientific writing - is now generally acknowledged. References: PMM 344b Dibner Heralds of Science 199 Horblit 18b and Garrison-Morton 220 all for the English first edition of 1859 - Freeman 655 - Fraisse Clémence Royer philosophe et femme de sciences 1985 reprinting Royer's preface in full - Harvey Almost a Man of Genius: Clémence Royer Feminism and Nineteenth-Century Science 1997. 8vo 175 × 111 mm: LXIV XXIII 25-712 pp. Folding lithographed plate by Delarue of Paris bound between pp. 160 and 161. Printed at Saint-Denis by A. Moulin. Contemporary French half red morocco over marbled paper-covered boards spine with five raised bands set off by gilt double fillets gilt-lettered CH. DARWIN and ORIGINE DES ESPÈCES in the second and third compartments small gilt ornament to the remaining compartments red-speckled endpapers edges yellowed. Library stamp of the Château de Beaulieu monogrammed G. T. F. at the head of the half-title. Joints and hinges sound and unrestored; morocco fresh and unrubbed at the bands gilt bright; corners lightly bumped; text block clean and tight with the usual scattered light foxing to preliminaries; folding plate unreinforced without tears or repairs at the folds. . Guillaumin et Cie; Victor Masson et Fils unknown
1847réf. 1641FIRST EDITION MAGNIFICENT SET OF THE INAUGURAL 24 VOLUMES PUBLISHED BY THE NEW PALAEONTOGRAPICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON—100 MONOGRAPHS 1000 PLATES 7000 PAGES INCLUDING SEMINAL WORKS OF CHARLES DARWIN AND RICHARD OWEN. 24 quarto volumes 8 x 11 inches later half leather gilt-lettered on spine with gilt panel lines over green textured cloth with gilt-rules green patterned endpapers each containing up to 7 monographs with lithographic or engraved plates many folding and some wood engravings in the text. The volumes appear to be unread with tight bindings that are as new and bright plates. Preliminary pages of each volume contain a perforated stamp of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh—there are no other ownership marks only rare light foxing. Very good. The Palaeontographical Society was established in 1847 and is the oldest society devoted to the study of paleontology worldwide. Its primary role is to promote the description and illustration of the British fossil flora and fauna via publication of an authoritative monograph series. The monographs were issued annually to members of the society. They cover a wide range of taxonomic groups from microfossils trilobites and ammonites through to Coal Measure plants mammals and reptiles and from all ages from Cambrian to Pleistocene. They form a benchmark for understanding the past life of the British Isles and many include the original descriptions of numerous key species. The first monograph Vol. 1 on the Crag Mollusca was published in March 1848 and the Society continues this work today. Notable authors in the series include Charles Darwin and Richard Owen both members of the Society. Darwin's interest in barnacles had first arisen in his student days in Edinburgh under the guidance of Robert Grant and increased during his detailed work in dissecting and classifying the specimens he had collected on the Beagle voyage. Darwin published his papers on fossil barnacles included in volumes 5 1851 and 8 1854 reflecting the 8 years that he devoted to the study of extinct and living barnacles establishing his credentials for formulating his theory of natural selection in The Origin of Species in 1859. In his analysis of reptilian British fossils Darwin's leading opponent Richard Owen identified unique characteristics of Megalosaurus vol. 9 Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus vol. 10 that distinguished them from extant lizards and coined the term dinosaur "terrible lizard" in 1841. There are 22 monographs by Owen in the first 24 volumes including 16 on dinosaurs 4 on other reptiles and turtles and 2 on mammals including whales. British fossil hunter William Buckland found some fossils in 1819 and he eventually described them and named them in 1824. Like scientists before him Buckland thought the fossils belonged to an ancient larger version of a modern reptile. The first edition of a work which laid the foundation to vertebrate paleontology was Georges Cuvier's Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupèdes Researches on quadruped fossil bones published in France in 1812. In 1822 Cuvier's disciple and editor of the scientific publication Journal de physique Henri de Blainville introduced the term palaeontologie as the study of fossilized organisms—translated to the English paleontology. The word palaeontographical was coined by members of the Clay Club that established the new society whose goal was to describe and illustrate newly discovered fossils. The rapid progress in geology and paleontology during the 1830s and 1840s was aided by a growing international network of geologists and fossil specialists whose work was organized and reviewed by an increasing number of geological societies. Many of these geologists and paleontologists were now paid professionals working for universities museums and government geological surveys. The relatively high level of public support for the earth sciences was due to their cultural impact and their proven economic value in helping to exploit mineral resources such as coal. Another important factor was the development in the late 18th and early 19th centuries of museums with large natural history collections. The first 24 years of the Palaeontographical Society Monographs spans the middle of the 19th century and brackets publication of The Origin of Species in 1859. The intense activity in British paleontology at this time is reflected in the 110 monographs contained in these 24 volumes and provides a visual as well as a narrative context for the contributions of Darwin and Owen. The 27 contributing authors reveal the strong attraction of paleontology for physicians and the wide variety of species whose ancestors were pursued. These ranged from minute foraminifera to larger marine invertebrates including corals tunicates brachiopods mollusks echinoderms ammonites belemnites trilobites and eurypterids and vertebrates fish reptiles and mammals. Because photography did not become widely available until the end of the 19th century illustrations in the monographs were executed as lithographs or engravings. The most prominent London lithographers of the day were recruited to produce the dramatic plates. Many of these artists were themselves accomplished naturalists. These included Day & Son Lithographers to Queen Victoria; George Henry Ford a member of the British Museum; Michael & Nicholas Hanhart who developed a complex layering of tint stones; Charles Joseph Hullmandel author of The Art of Drawing on Stone; and the Sowerby family a British family of several generations of naturalists illustrators botanists and zoologists active from the late 18th century to the mid twentieth century. The three George Sowerbys produced major works on mollusks and their systematics including the many monographs by the Society as well as Darwin's barnacles. Notably the Sowerbys were responsible for also producing the copper plate engravings for these monographs including James De Carle Sowerby who founded the Royal Botanic Society and Gardens and was its secretary for 30 years. The Paleontographical Society Monographs are cited by Darwin in his reading notebooks. NOTE: Available upon request info@BiomedRarebooks.com A 22-page detailed description of the set containing large magnification images of selected plates list of individual monographs in each volume and list of authors subjects plates sorted by subject. Palaeontographical Society hardcover
1871réf. 18750London: John Murray 1871. FIRST EDITION FIRST ISSUE. Numerous text illustrations. Original publisher's green cloth binding; an excellent set. First edition first issue of Darwin’s classic work in comparative anatomy his first inclusion of man in the general theory of natural selection and the first appearance of the term “evolution” in any of his works see Volume I page 2. In the twelve years since the publication of Origin the author had expanded his thinking as to man's inclusion with the other animals and this title which grew out of his Variations of Animals and Plants is based on his vast collection of data dating from 1837. Here by comparing the physiological and psychological aspects of man and ape he fills in what had been merely suggested in Origin that man's ancestor if still alive today would be classified among the primates and on a lower scale than the apes. The last chapter is an added essay on sexual selection that is the preferential chances of mating that some individuals of one sex have over their rivals. “Perhaps Darwin’s greatest contributions in this area was to show that secondary sexual characteristics had evolved in relation to a complex pattern of reproductive behavior which must itself be the product of natural selection” DSB III p. 575. This essay ends with the famous and often misquoted statement “Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.” Freeman 937; Garrison & Morton 170. John Murray unknown
1860réf. 28009John Murray 1860. 8vo. Fifth Thousand Second Edition Second Issue with folding diagram neat contemporary signature in pencil at head of title with second pencilled signature lower down front free endpaper a little chafed at fore-edge three or four small fox-spots each on half-title title and diagram; original green cloth boards elaborately blocked in blind gilt back brown endpapers uncut expertly recased with original endpapers preserved a remarkably bright fresh copy in minimally restored publisher's binding. With 32pp publisher's catalogue dated January 1860 bound in at end and the binder's ticket of Edmonds & Remnants on rear paste-down. The second edition second issue is not so named on title but simply labelled 'Fifth Thousand'; Freeman records that 3000 copies were printed following the 1250 copies of the first edition. Although Darwin considered this edition a rapid revision to meet demand his changes are much more than mere correction. 'The total number of changes in this edition is impressive enough. No chapter was untouched' Peckham. The most famous alteration is the dilution of the whale bear passage on p.184 which Darwin later regretted although he never restored it. With the signed and ruled advertisements which Freeman considers the first issue. Freeman 113 variant a; Freeman F376. John Murray, hardcover
1861réf. 304713Third edition with additions and corrections seventh thousand. Octavo. Half title page folding diagram at p. 123. 2 pages of advertisements at end. Original green cloth stamped in gilt and blind; brown coated endpapers. Binder's ticket of Edmonds & Remnants on back pastedown. A fresh bright tight copy of a book that is usually found in worn condition. No foxing. Small booksellers label on verso front free endpaper. Neat signatures of two previous owners on the half title page. Freeman 381. "The most important biological book ever written" Freeman p. 73. John Murray hardcover
1859réf. 105735London: Lovell Reeve 1859. First Edition. Hardcover. London Lovell Reeve November 1859 first separate edition. Large quarto viii 128 pages complete with the half-title. Later half roan and stippled cloth lightly rubbed at the extremities; a very crisp and bright copy. 'The first important botanical work by a supporter of the doctrine of evolution by natural selection' Norman often quoted but not going nearly far enough in our opinion!. A singular rarity of the utmost importance. In the concluding paragraph of the postscript unique to this edition Hooker writes: 'I would further observe here to avoid ambiguity that my friend Mr. Darwin's just completed work "On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection" sic from the perusal of much of which in MS. I have profited so largely had not appeared during the printing of the Essay or I should have largely quoted it. Kew November 4 1859'. Lovell Reeve hardcover
1896réf. 133260New York: D. Appleton and Company 1896-97. The Authorized edition of the works of Charles Darwin. Octavo 15 volumes bound in original three quarters morocco gilt titles to the spine top edge gilt illustrated with in-text drawings and plates some volumes with frontispieces. In near fine condition. An exceptional set. Charles Darwin has been widely recognized since his own time as one of the most influential writers in the history of Western thought. His books were widely read by specialists and the general public and his influence had been extended by almost continuous public debate over the past 150 years. His most well known works are The Origin of Species The Descent of Man and Voyage of the Beagle. D. Appleton and Company unknown
1871réf. 1308103John Murray UK 1871. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/No Jacket. London: John Murray 1871 1871. 2 volumes octavo. Original green cloth titles to spines gilt sides with panels blocked in blind blue coated endpapers. The covers are in good condition and very secure - both spines have been professionally rebacked. Gilt nice and bright. There is a scuffing to the covers and the corners are a bit bumped but with very little loss - a quite presentable set. The bindings are very tight and square having been repaired strengthened and re-cased. Internally both volumes are very good indeed. The endpapers have been expertly reinforced with matching period paper - something that could well be missed without careful scrutiny. Previous owner name and notes in light pencil to the verso of the half-title which could be easily erased. Some foxing to first and last few leaves of each volume but the text pages are clean and bright throughout with very little foxing that I can see and no previous ink marks. The original adverts are complete and dated January 1871. Cloth very lightly rubbed a lovely set. Engravings throughout. First edition first issue with the errata on the verso of the title leaf of vol. II. Here the word "evolution" appears for the first time in any of Darwin's works preceding its appearance in the sixth edition of The Origin of Species the following year. Darwin had hoped that one of his supporters might tackle the thorny question of human evolution but was forced to face the logic of his own theory himself. Darwin deviated from his ostensible subject of mankind to describe sexual selection in the animal kingdom enabling him to answer those who saw peacock tails as an expression of divine aesthetics. Darwin also set out a definite family tree for humans tracing their affinity with the Old World monkeys and laid out his views on the evolutionary origins of morality and religion. "The Descent understood by Darwin as a sequel to the Origin was written with a maturity and depth of learning that marked Darwin's status as an élite gentleman of science" ODNB. Housed in a custom-made collectors slipcase. Along with Darwins Origin of Species one of the most important books in all of science and thus in all of human knowledge. Quite uncommon in the true first issue. John Murray, UK hardcover books
