Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" - Legacy By Robert McNamara Updated November 21, 2016. Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species on November 24, 1859 and forever changed the way humans think about science. It's not an exaggeration to say that Darwin's landmark work became one of the most influential books in history. Decades earlier, the British naturalist and scholar had spent five years sailing around the world aboard a research ship, H.M.S. Beagle . After returning to England, Darwin spent years in quiet study, examining plant and animal specimens. The ideas he expressed in his classic book in 1859 did not occur to him as sudden bursts of inspiration, but were developed over a period of decades. Research Led Darwin to Write At the end of the Beagle voyage, Darwin arrived back in England on October 2, 1836. After greeting friends and family he distributed to scholarly colleagues a number of specimens he had collected during the expedition around the world. Consultations with an ornithologist confirmed that Darwin had discovered several species of birds, and the young naturalist became fascinated with the idea that some species seemed to have replaced other species.

continue reading below our video Profile of Charles Darwin As Darwin began to realize that species change, he wondered how that happened. The summer after returning to England, in July 1837, Darwin began a new notebook and took to writing down his thoughts on transmutation, or the concept of one species transforming into another. For the next two years Darwin essentially argued with himself in his notebook, testing out ideas. Malthus Inspired Charles Darwin In October 1838 Darwin re-read Essay on the Principle of Population, an influential text by the British philosopher Thomas Malthus . The idea advanced by Malthus that society contains a struggle for existence struck a chord with Darwin. Malthus had been writing about people struggling to survive in the economic competition of the emerging modern world. But it inspired Darwin to begin thinking of species of animals and their own struggles for survival. The idea of "survival of the fittest" began to take hold. By the spring of 1840, Darwin had come up with the phrase "natural selection," as he wrote it in the margin of a book on horse breeding he was reading at the time.

In the early 1840s, Darwin had essentially worked out his theory of natural selection, which holds that organisms best suited to their environment tend to survive and reproduce and thus become dominant. Darwin began writing an extended work on the subject, which he likened to a pencil sketch and which is now known to scholars as the Sketch. The Delay in Publishing On the Origin of Species It is conceivable that Darwin could have published his landmark book in the 1840s, yet he did not. Scholars have long speculated on the reasons for the delay, but it seems that it's simply because Darwin kept amassing information he could use to present a lengthy and well-reasoned argument. By the mid-1850s Darwin began working on a major work that would incorporate his research and insights. Another biologist, Alfred Russel Wallace, was working in the same general field, and he and Darwin were aware of each other. In June 1858 Darwin opened a package sent to him by Wallace, and found a copy of a book Wallace had been writing. Inspired in part by the competition from Wallace, Darwin resolved to push ahead and publish his own book.

He realized he could not include all his research, and his original title for his work in progress referred to it as an "abstract." Darwin's Landmark Book Published in November 1859 Darwin finished a manuscript, and his book, titled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races In the Struggle for Life, was published in London on November 24, 1859. (Over time, the book became known by the shorter title On the Origin of Species.) The original edition of the book was 490 pages, and had taken Darwin about nine months to write. When he first submitted chapters to his publisher John Murray, in April 1859, Murray had reservations about the book. A friend of the publisher wrote to Darwin and suggested he write something quite different, a book on pigeons. Darwin politely brushed that suggestion aside, and Murray went ahead and published the book Darwin intended to write. On the Origin of Species turned out to be quite a profitable book for its publisher. The initial press run was modest, only 1,250 copies, but those sold out in the first two days of sale.

The following month a second edition of 3,000 copies also sold out, and the book continued selling through successive editions for decades. Darwin's book generated countless controversies, as it contradicted the Biblical account of creation and seemed to be in opposition to religion. Darwin himself remained mostly aloof from the debates and continued his research and writing. He revised On the Origin of Species through six editions, and he also published another book on evolutionary theory, The Descent of Man, in 1871. Darwin also wrote prolifically about cultivating plants. When Darwin died in 1882, he was given a state funeral in Britain and was buried in Westminster Abbey, near the grave of Isaac Newton. His status as a great scientist had been assured by the publication of On the Origin of Species. Darwin Online: On the Origin of Species Advanced search On the Origin of Species This, certainly the most important biological book ever written, has received detailed bibliographical treatment in Morse Peckham's variorum edition, 1959. The first edition also has a full bibliographic description in H. D. Horblit One hundred books famous in science, 1964, Grolier Club.

Peckham considers all editions and issues published in England of which he was aware, from the first of 1859 up to the thirty-ninth thousand of 1890. His work includes consideration of paper, type and bindings, as well as giving summaries of John Murray's accounts for each printing. The bibliography is an adjunct to the variorum text which shows the great changes which Darwin made to the five editions which follow the first. The author's minor changes in the printing of 1876 , which seem to have been ignored by all subsequent editors and even by the publisher's themselves, are brought to light, although Peckham was only able to see the issue of 1878. Since Peckham's list is likely to remain the standard bibliography of the work for a long time, it is worth while to summarise here the few apparent errors which I have noticed in it. These are not surprising in view of the great difficulties involved, even in England, of sighting copies of all of the many issues.

Within Darwin's lifetime he misses, so far as I am aware, only three, the 1859 issue of the fifth thousand and the twelfth and thirteenth thousands of 1872. He refers to the thirteenth thousand of 1873, but the same issue occurs with an earlier title page. None of these three is mentioned in Murray's accounts. The 1872 thirteenth is the same as that of 1873 except for the date on the title page and the advertisements of Darwin's works. He describes the fifteenth thousand of 1875 and the twentieth of 1878, both of which he had seen, as being identical in format with the thirteenth of 1873. Whereas the latter is an octavo in eights, the former two, as well as the eighteenth of 1876, are octavos in twelves. He treats all the octavos in twelves as duodecimos, when Murray's accounts make it clear that they are octavos imposed in sheet and a half. He states (p.

9) that editions since 1898 have not contained the summary of differences. Murray Darwins after this date occur in three forms, the standard, in cloth, those in Murray's Library series in cloth, and the cheap in paper covers. All the issues are listed in the printing of 1920, and all that I have seen do contain the summary of differences. Indeed I have never seen a Murray Darwin without it after 1861, when it first appeared. He also states that issues after 1898 are printed from the stereos of the two volume Library Edition repaginated. This is true of the issues which are paginated xxxi + 703 pp., but there are also issues in both cloth and paper with a pagination of xxi + 432 pp; these are the cheap ones which tend not to be found in libraries. His statement on page [792] that in the later issues, from the thirty-fifth thousand of 1888, the thousands given on the title pages are correct is not true because he has ignored the two volume Library Edition of 1888 which is the thirty-third thousand.

Finally, he considers only the editions and issues printed in England. Darwin was extremely keen that his ideas should be disseminated as widely as possible by translation, and that the changes in these ideas should also reach foreign editions. To this end, he corresponded with translators and with publishers. Certainly, the fourth American printing of 1860 and the first Spanish of 1877 contain matter not present in any English printing. The early German and French editions also need examination. Although Peckham describes and illustrates the bindings, he does not seem to have seen enough copies to notice even striking variations in them. Darwin had intended to write a much larger work on transmutation and had made considerable progress towards it when he received, on June 18th 1858, the letter from Wallace which led to the publication of their joint paper in August . His 'big book' as he called it was never published as such, but Variation under domestication (1868) represents the first part of it, and his surviving manuscript of most of the second part, Natural selection, although far from prepared for the printer, has appeared recently, edited by Robert C. Stauffer (No. 1583 ).

Hooker wrote to Darwin , late in 1859 after the publication of On the origin of species, 'I am all the more glad that you have published in this form, for the three volumes, unprefaced by this, would have choked any naturalist of the nineteenth century'. He started work on the book on Tuesday July 20th, 1858 , whilst on holiday at Sandown in the Isle of Wight. The details of its composition and publishing are given in Life and letters ( Vol. II, pp. 126 -178). To begin with, he expected it to be an abstract of perhaps as little as thirty pages, published in the Journal of the Linnean Society, but by the winter it was clear that it would have to be a book. In March Lyell mentioned it to John Murray who accepted it in April, after seeing the first three chapters. It was all, except the index, in corrected proof by September 11th. Darwin was still calling it an abstract up until the end of March, and he roughed out a title page which Lyell showed to Murray. This is printed in Life and letters ( Vol. II, p.

152 ), but in upper case throughout whilst the original, now at the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, reads 'An abstract of an Essay / on the / Origin / of / Species and Varieties / Through natural selection/. Murray thought it too long. Darwin received a copy early in November; Peckham says that Murray sent it on Wednesday 2nd. The overseas presentation copies were sent out before Friday 11th, and the home ones must have gone out at about the same time because he received a letter of thanks from Sir John Lubbock on Tuesday 15th, or earlier. Twenty-three author's presentation copies are recorded, but there were probably more; the twelve which I have seen are all inscribed by one of Murray's clerks and I know of no record of one inscribed by Darwin himself. It was offered to the trade at Murray's autumn sale a week later, on 22nd; most sources say that 1,500 were taken up, others 1,493.

Only 1,250 had however been printed of which 1,192 were available for sale, the rest being twelve for the author, forty-one for review and five for Stationers' Hall copyright. As Darwin took at least another twenty for presentation, the final number available for the trade was about 1,170. These facts are at variance with the often-printed statement that all the 1,250 copies were sold to the public on publication day, Thursday 24th; indeed once copies had reached the bookshops, up and down the country, how could anyone know whether they were sold or not. The origin of this mistake is in Darwin's diary ' 1250 copies printed. The first edition was published on November 24th, and all copies sold first day .' And in a letter to Huxley on November 24th "I have heard from Murray today that he sold the whole edition of my book the first day." There is only one issue of the first edition, the text being identical in all copies. There are, however, small differences in the cases and in the inserted advertisements; these points have been considered in detail in The Book collector, Vol.

16, pp. 340-344. The book cannot be recognized from the date on the title page, because as discussed below, there are copies of the second edition which are also dated 1859; nor can it be recognized by the misspelling 'LINNÆAN' on the title page. The presence of two quotations only, from Whewell and Bacon, on the verso of the half-title leaf (p. [ii]) is however diagnostic; the only other edition with two is the first issue of the first American and that is dated 1860. Two other points are usually made, the misprint ' speceies ' on page 20, line 11, and the whale-bear story in full on page 184 ; these are not necessary for its recognition, and many more differences can be found in Peckham's edition. Indeed the whale-bear story in full is not peculiar to the first edition, but occurs in all the four American printings of 1860. The single folded lithographic diagram , by William West, is inserted facing page 117.

It indicates Darwin's views of possible sequences of evolution, and continued to be used in all subsequent editions. Philip D. Gingerich has used it recently in a discussion of the speed and pattern of evolution at a species level (Amer. J. Sci., Vol. 276, pp. 1-28, 1976). The book is signed and sewn in twelves and is often described as a duodecimo. The page shape is that of an octavo and Murray's ledger shows that the paper used was sheet and a half crown. In the bolts the folded half sheet is inserted in the middle of the folded sheet; the first and second leaves are signed A1, A2 etc. and the fifth leaf is signed A3 etc. The identification of original variants of the case is bedevilled by the habit of transferring the text of copies in original, but worn, cases into better cases taken off copies of the second or third editions, which are closely similar. However, examination of copies with impeccable antecedents has shown two variants. These are described under No. 373 and are illustrated in my paper in The Book collector (loc. cit.); no priority can be assigned.

The first edition, when in the cloth, has, almost invariably, thirty-two pages of inserted advertisements of Murray's general list dated June 1859 and with the edges uncut. I have seen a copy in commerce with [4] pages of Murray's popular works, dated July 1859, following the general works. The copy gave no indication of being sophisticated and was probably a freak. The general list occurs in three forms: 1 With the text of each page surrounded by a frame of a single rule; page [1] signed B; on page 2 the fourth item of Admiralty publications retains the numeral 4, and on page 3 in item 22 the name Harrison's retains the genitive S. 2 The text of each page is not surrounded by a frame, but page [1] is signed B; on page 2 the numeral 4 is retained, but on page 3 the genitive S has dropped out, reading Harrison'. 3 There is no frame, and signature B has dropped out on page [1]; 4 has dropped out on page 2, and the genitive S is still absent on page 3.

The other anomalies in the Admiralty list, that is the repetition of number 17, and the number 22 coming before 21, are the same in all issues. This situation would seem to suggest that the advertisements were printed from standing type at least three times, in the order given. I have seen only two copies of the first, Darwin's own, at Cambridge, and one at the University of Toronto, bought in Cambridge but not an author's presentation. Both the other two are found in author's presentation copies, the third more commonly. [The title page and facing quotations of a first edition of Origin of species on loan to Christ's College, Cambridge. Photograph: John van Wyhe.] Although John Murray was more than 250 copies short of the orders received at his autumn sale, he did not reprint, but asked Darwin to start revising at once. Murray's letter reached the author on November 24th, while he was on a long water cure at Ilkley, Yorkshire. On November 25th, he writes 'I have been going over the sheets'; on December 14th 'I have been busy in getting a reprint (with a very few corrections) through the press . .

. Murray is now printing 3000 copies'; and on December 21st 'my publisher is printing off, as rapidly as possible . . . The new edition is only a reprint, yet I have made a few important corrections'. It was advertised as now ready in The Times on Christmas eve and in The Athenaeum and The Saturday Review on New Year's eve. This would have been quite normal practice for a book which was to have an official publication date early in the new year, nevertheless there are two copies known which are dated 1859 on the title page. The existence of such copies has long been known to the trade, although, from their extreme rarity, few booksellers can ever have seen one. It was customary, for many years, for anyone offering a copy of the first edition to describe it as 'first edition, first issue', and Casey A. Wood An introduction to the literature of vertebrate zoology, 1931, claimed that McGill University held them both. It does not and never did. The book-sellers were, in a purist sense, right; the new printing was from standing type of the first edition, although with a considerable number of resettings.

Darwin himself considered that it was merely corrected, but the next printing, in 1861, was called the third edition on the title page. The title leaves are the same, and from the same setting of type, with the same misspelling 'LINNÆAN'. The quotations on the verso of the half-title are now three; the new one, from Joseph Butler's Analogy, is placed between those from Whewell and Bacon, and the former reads 'WHEWELL' instead of 'W. WHEWELL'. The note of date of publication, at the foot of this page, differs in the two copies seen; in one it reads 'Down, Bromley, Kent, / October 1st, 1859.', as in the first edition but reset; in the other, the setting is so far the same but '(1st Thousand).' is added, and the whole page is exactly as it is in the usual [second] edition of 1860.

The copy at Yale is in poor condition and that at the University of Southern California bad, but both are in the original cases which are identical with one of the variants of the cases of 1860 and neither has any inserted advertisements. A third copy, in commerce in America, was brought to my notice in March 1977. This one was in excellent condition and had inserted advertisements dated June 1859, in the third variant referred to above. The case was precisely the same as those of the other two. [Freeman correction 1986] The second edition , which is not so-called on the title page, was published, in the form in which it is usually seen, on January 7th, 1860. Three thousand copies were printed, perhaps including the few, considered above, which have 1859 on the title page; this was the largest printing of any edition or issue in Darwin's lifetime. It can be recognized immediately by the date, by the words 'fifth thousand', and the correct spelling of 'Linnean' on the title page. There are three quotations on the verso of the half-title leaf.

The misprint 'speceies' is corrected and the whale-bear story diluted, an alteration which Darwin later regretted, although he never restored the full text. This story is not found again in any printing, except in the American editions of 1860, until the end of copyright. It is to be found reprinted in full, however in James Lamont Seasons with the sea-horses, 1861, as part of an essay on the origin of marine mammals (pp. 271-285). The cases are closely similar to those of the first edition, but three minor variants occur. These are entered here under No. 376 and have been described in detail in The Book Collector, Vol. 13, pp. 213-214, 1964; the third, with small letters in the publisher's imprint, is later than the other two. Murray's general list advertisements, dated January 1860, are present in most, but not all, copies; in some of them each page of text is surrounded by a frame of a single rule, as in variant 1 of the first edition; in others this rule is absent.

The price fell to 14s. Murray sold 700 copies at his November sale 'but has not half the number to supply'; so Darwin started revising again. Darwin received six free copies; one, inscribed to an unknown recipient 'With the kind regards of the Author' in his own hand, was sold at Sotheby's in 1974; this is the only inscribed copy of any edition of the Origin, other than family copies, known to me. The third edition appeared in April 1861, 2,000 copies being printed. The case is the same as that of the two previous editions, but again differing in small details. It 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 . This sketch, which was written to satisfy complaints that Darwin had not sufficiently considered his predecessors in the general theory of evolution, had already appeared in a shorter form in the first German edition , as well as in the fourth American printing where it is called a preface; both of these appeared in 1860.

Asa Gray wrote to Darwin on Feb. 20 that he had delivered to Appleton "Historical paper". There is also a postscript on page xii. This concerns a review of the earlier editions by Asa Gray which had appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1860 , and as a pamphlet paid for by Darwin, in 1861. This edition has one leaf of advertisements which is part of the book (2A6). The fourth edition of 1866 was of 1,500 copies. It was again extensively altered, and it is in this one that the date of the first edition, as given on the verso of the half title, is corrected from October 1st to November 24th. Darwin's own copy, at Cambridge, is in a case of the same pattern as those of the first three editions, but all other copies, although the same in general, have origin and species in italic; the blind stamping on both boards is new and the whole volume is a little shorter. There are two minor variations of this case; the earlier has the inserted advertisements dated January 1865 and the later dated April 1867.

The fifth edition of 1869 was of 2,000 copies and was again much revised. It is in this one that Darwin used the expression ' survival of the fittest ', Herbert Spencer's term, for the first time; it appears first in the heading of Chapter IV. In the footnote on page xxii, the name D'Alton, which occurs twice, should read D'Alton both times, as it does in the fourth edition, but the second one has become Dalton. It remains thus until the thirty-ninth thousand of 1890, but in the forty-first of 1891, which was reset, Francis Darwin altered the first to Dalton, so that there were then two mistakes. Modern editions continue to have either D'Alton/Dalton or Dalton/Dalton. The format of this edition changes to octavo in eights; the cases, of which there are four conspicuous variants, are entirely new, and the spine title is reduced to Origin of species. Inserted advertisements, dated September 1868, are usually present. The sixth edition , which is usually regarded as the last, appeared in February 1872.

Murray's accounts show that 3,000 copies were printed, but this total presumably included both those with eleventh thousand on the title page and those with twelfth, the latter being notably less common. It is again extensively revised and contains a new chapter, VII . This was inserted to confute the views of the Roman Catholic biologist St George Mivart. The edition was aimed at a wider public and printed in smaller type, the volume shorter again and giving the general impression of a cheap edition, which at 7s. 6d. it was. The title changes to The origin of species, and a glossary , compiled by W. S. Dallas, appears. It is in this edition that the word ' evolution ' occurs for the first time. It had been used in the first edition of The descent of man in the previous year, but not before in this work. 'Evolved' had been the last word of the text in all previous editions, but 'evolution' had been omitted, perhaps to avoid confusion with the use of the word by Herbert Spencer or with its more particular embryological meaning.

The word had however been used in its transformist sense by Lyell as early as 1832 (Principles of geology, Vol. II, p. 11 ). In this edition it occurs twice on page 201 and three times on page 424. The title page reads 'Sixth edition, with additions and corrections. (Eleventh thousand).' Three misprints have been noticed in this text, the first of which persists in all British and American editions, except those based on earlier texts, to this day; it is also transferred to translations. The last sentence of the third paragraph of Chapter XIV (p. 365) reads : 'I believe that this is the case, and that community of descent - the one known cause of close similarity in organic beings - is the bond, which though observed by various degrees of modification, is partially revealed to us by our classifications.' The word 'observed' makes nonsense of this sentence and, as the previous five editions read 'hidden as it is by various degrees of modification', is clearly a misprint for 'obscured'.

In the glossary of scientific terms, the word 'indigenes' is misprinted 'indigeens'; this persists until 1888. In the Library Edition of that year the text reads 'indigeens', but there is an inserted erratum leaf (Vol. 2, pp. [vii-viii]) which alters it to 'indigens', and it is altered in the text, from stereos, for the second edition of the Library Edition of 1891. The one volume thirty-third thousand of 1888 has 'indigeens', but the thirty-fifth, of the same year, has 'indigens'; this latter form continues in all further Murray printings. Darwin himself uses 'indigenes' several times in the fourth chapter of the first and all later editions. 'Indigens' was used by Sir Thomas Browne and is allowable, but 'indigenes' is what Darwin would have written. Both forms are found in editions in print today. Finally, in this edition, the opening words of the Historical Sketch read 'I will here a give a brief sketch . . .'.

This continues unnoticed through seventeen printings from the same stereos; but it was corrected when the whole book was reset for the forty-first thousand of 1891. This edition was reprinted, from stereos, later in the same year as the thirteenth thousand, and, again as the thirteenth, in 1873. On the verso of the title leaf of that of 1872 there are advertisements for nine of Darwin's works, whereas the 1873 reprint has ten. The addition is the Expression of the emotions in its tenth thousand of 1873. As the first edition of the Expression of the emotions came out in November 1872, the first issue of the thirteenth thousand must have been in press before this time, or else the new book would have been added. The issue has no inserted advertisements, but copies of 1873 may have them dated April 1874. The printing of 1876 is the final text as Darwin left it . Peckham drew attention to the little known fact that there are small differences between the text of 1878 and that of 1872.

He knew that the printings of 1873 and 1875 were from unaltered stereos of 1872, but was unable to see a copy of 1876 and had therefore to leave it uncertain whether these differences occur for the first time in that printing or in that of 1878 which he used for collation. The issue was of 1,250 copies only. This number is as small as any, being equalled only by that of the first edition; and, whilst the latter has been carefully conserved in libraries, no attention seems to have been paid to this one. It does not seem to have been previously recognized as the first printing of the final text, and is remarkably hard to come by. It was, incidentally, this edition which Samuel Butler had beside him when writing Evolution old and new in 1879. This printing is the eighteenth thousand, but, as it is important to know what was the first issue of the final text, it should be noticed that advertisements for The origin of species in other works by Darwin around 1876 mention the existence of both sixteenth and seventeenth thousands as well as this one.

These may be summarized as follows: 1875 Insectivorous plants advertises the sixteenth 1875 Variation under domestication advertises the seventeenth 1875 Cross and self fertilisation advertises the sixteenth 1876 Geological observations advertises the seventeenth 1876 Journal of researches advertises the eighteenth 1876 Climbing plant advertises the eighteenth 1877 Fertilisation of orchid advertises the sixteenth 1877 The descent of man advertises the sixteenth 1877 Forms of flowers advertises the sixteenth No copies of the sixteenth or seventeenth thousands have ever been recorded; it is difficult to see from the printing records how they can exist, although they may. We know that the eighteenth was in print in 1876, yet the sixteenth is advertised three times in the following year. It is more likely that the compositor was making up from bad copy. The title page of this issue bears 'Sixth edition, with additions and corrections to 1872. Eighteenth thousand.' What the intention of this change of inscription was must remain doubtful.

There are no additions to the text and the pagination, from stereos, is unchanged. There are however corrections, slight but undoubtedly those of Darwin himself. The two most obvious of these are the change from Cape de Verde Islands to Cape Verde Islands, and the change from climax to acme. The index is not altered so that Cape de Verde is retained there in this edition and later issues and editions, including the two volume Library Edition, which was entirely reset. The reason for the change of the name of these islands is not known, and Cape de Verde is retained long afterwards in issues of the Journal of researches printed from stereos. However Darwin had no copyright in his Journal and only Cape Verde is found in Vegetable mould and worms which was first published in 1881. There is also one small change in sense in Chapter XIV. The details of these changes can be found in Peckham. In 1878, and subsequently, the same stereos were used for the very many issues which appeared, in a variety of bindings. The first one to appear in a standard binding was the twenty-fourth thousand of 1882.

All these issues, right up to the last in 1929, continue to include the summary of differences and the historical sketch. An entirely new setting in larger type, was made for the Library Edition of 1888 in two volumes and, after two reissues in that form, the same stereos, repaginated, were used for the standard edition of the Edwardian period. This Library Edition is uniform with a similar edition of The descent of man, and the same cloth was used for Life and letters. The cheap edition was entirely reset for the forty-first thousand of 1891. The paper covered issues, which have been referred to above, have the title embossed on the front cover, and were produced for the remarkable price of one shilling, whilst the same printing in cheap cloth cost 2s. 6d. Both of these, the latter particularly, are hard to find. There are two issues by another publisher in the copyright period. These were by George Routledge in the bindings of Sir John Lubbock's 'Hundred Books', in which they were No. 88.

In the first issue, the title page and text are those of the forty-fifth thousand of 1894, with a list of Sir John's choices tipped in before the half-title leaf. Seven hundred and fifty sets of the sheets were bought from Murray and issued in this form by Routledge and Kegan Paul in 1895. The second issue consists of Murray's fifty-sixth thousand, of 1899, and there is no printed indication that this is a part of Sir John's series. The green cloth binding is however uniform with the rest of the series. The first edition came out of copyright in November 1901, and Ward Lock printed it in the same year in the Minerva Library new series. The statement by Darlington, in Watt's reprint of 1950, that his is the only reprinting of the first edition is not true. This Ward Lock, the Unit Library edition of 1902, the Hutchinson's Popular Classics of 1906, and the Ward Lock World Library of 1910 are all based on the first.

Most of the other early reprints are based on the fifth thousand, but that of Collins in 1910 is based on the third edition. Modern reprints usually state that they are based on the sixth edition of 1872, but they are actually based on that of 1876. There have been about 140 reprints in English in this century, many of them in standard library series such as Everyman and the World's Classics. Some are important because they are introduced by leading scholars of evolution and show the changing attitudes towards Darwinism over the years; one, the Everyman of 1956, has even had its introduction reprinted by the Evolution Protest Movement. Almost all of them are bread and butter reprints in small type, but at a reasonable price. However there is one spacious edition, that for the Limited Editions Club of New York in 1963; this was designed and printed by the scholar-printer George Dunstan, at the Griffin Press, Adelaide. There are the usual abridged versions and extracts for schools, and even a coupon edition from Odhams Press.

There have been two facsimiles of the first edition; the earlier, in 1964, omits the original index and substitutes its own; the later, in 1969, is twenty millimetres taller than the original. In 1981 a concordance was published: 1981 Ithaca, Cornell University Press. A concordance to Darwin’s origin of species, first edition. 8vo, xv+834 pp. edited by Paul H. Barrett, Donald J. Weinshank and Timothy T. Gottleber. In January 1860, Asa Gray was arranging for an American issue of the first edition to be published in Boston, but two New York houses, Appleton and Harpers, were also considering it. The former got their edition out in the middle of January and Harpers withdrew. Darwin wrote in his diary for May 22nd that it was of 2,500 copies, but there were four separate printings in 1860 and it is not clear whether this figure refers to the first alone.

The title pages of the first two of these are identical, but the first has only two quotations on the verso of the half-title leaf whereas the second has three; the one from Butler's Analogy was added after Whewell and Bacon instead of between them as in the English second edition. The third has 'REVISED EDITION' in roman capitals on the title page, and the fourth 'NEW EDITION, REVISED AND AUGMENTED BY THE AUTHOR' in italic capitals. In all four 'LINNÆAN' is wrongly spelt, but 'FAVOURED' is in the English style. The University of Virginia holds all four and their copies have been examined with a Hinman scanner. The texts of the first three are identical, in spite of the statement on the title page of the third, and follow that of the first English. The fourth is considerably altered. It includes a supplement of seven pages at the end of author's 'additions and alterations . . . received too late to be incorporated in their proper places'. It also contains the historical sketch, in its earlier and shorter form, as a preface. All four contain the whale-bear story in full.

The book was translated in Darwin's lifetime into Danish , Dutch , French , German , Hungarian, Italian, Polish , Russian , Serbian, Spanish and Swedish, and has appeared in a further eighteen languages since. This total of twenty-nine is higher than any other scientific work, except for the first books of Euclid. The Autobiography also gives Bohemian and Japanese; the former refers to the Serbian, but he was misinformed about the latter; the first appeared in 1896. Darwin was not happy about the first German translation. It was done from the second English edition by H. G. Bronn, who had, at Darwin's suggestion, added an appendix of the difficulties which occurred to him; but he had also excised bits of which he did not approve. This edition also contains the historical sketch in its shorter and earlier form. The text was tactfully revised by J. V. Carus who remained the most faithful and punctual of all Darwin's translators. There were also difficulties with the first French. Mile Royer, who Darwin described as 'one of the cleverest and oddest women in Europe' and wished 'had known more of natural history', added her own footnotes.

He was not really happy until the third translation by Edmond Barbier appeared in 1876. The first Spanish, of 1877, contains two letters from Darwin which have not been printed elsewhere. Click here for a full bibliographical list. See the Darwin Census: A Census of the Extant Copies of the 1st Edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species here. Darwin, C. R. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. [1st edition] Text Image Text & image PDF F373 See Francis Darwin's annotated presentation copy of the first edition, here . Darwin, C. R. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. [2d edition, second issue.] Text Image Text & image PDF F376 Darwin, C. R. 1860. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. New York: D. Appleton.

Image PDF F377 [1st American edition] Darwin, C. R. 1860. The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. New York: D. Appleton. New edition, revised and augmented. [4th American printing.] Text Image PDF F380 Darwin, C. R. 1861. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 3d edition. Seventh thousand. Text Image Text & image PDF F381 Darwin, C. R. 1866. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 4th edition. Eighth thousand. Text Image Text & image PDF F385 Darwin, C. R. 1869. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 5th edition. Tenth thousand. Text Image Text & image PDF F387 Darwin, C. R. 1872.

The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 6th edition; with additions and corrections. Eleventh thousand. Text Image Text & image PDF F391 Darwin, C. R. 1876. The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. 6th ed, with additions and corrections. Text Image PDF F401 (final text) Danish Darwin, C. R. 1872. Om Arternes Oprindelse ved Kvalitetsvalg eller ved de heldigst stillede Formers Sejr i Kampen for Tilværelsen. Translated by J. P. Jacobsen. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Introduction Text Image PDF F643 1909. Om Arternes Oprindelse ved Kvalitetsvalg eller ved de heldigst stillede Formers Sejr i Kampen for Tilvaerelsen. Text Image PDF F644 1913.

Om Arternes Oprindelse ved Kvalitetsvalg eller ved de heldigst stillede Formers Sejr i Kampen for Tilvaerelsen. Translated by J. P. Jacobsen. Revised by Frits Heide. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Text Image PDF F645 Dutch 1860. Het ontstaan der soorten van dieren en planten door middel van de natuurkeus, of het bewaard blijven van bevoorregte rassen in de strijd des levens.

On the Origin of Species: The book that changed the world | Science | The Guardian The book that changed the world On the Origin of Species, an instant bestseller, drew both applause and fury, writes Tim Radford Darwin's bulldog: Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), English biologist and principal exponent of Darwinism (Photograph: Time Life Pictures/Getty Images) Friday 8 February 2008 19.06 EST Share on Messenger Close Darwin's On the Origin of Species may have been a shock in 1859, but it was hardly a surprise: hundreds of naturalists, geologists and palaeontologists, many of them giants of science, must have known that something was coming, and some of them dreaded it. Among the more alarmed readers were people like Charles Lyell and Adam Sedgwick, geologists who taught Darwin and who had done more than anyone to show that creation must have taken a lot longer than the Biblical seven days.

Even more outraged was Richard Owen, the man who coined the word "dinosaur" and created the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, and whose theory of the origin of species was rooted in religion: he accepted some evolutionary adaptation, but from a set of archetypes created by God. Much of the hostility and alarm came not overtly from religion, but from within science. The book was hailed, applauded, challenged, questioned, condemned, cruelly dismissed and, rather astonishingly, ignored: the president of the Geological Society of London in 1859 managed to give Darwin a medal of honour for his geological observations in the Andes and his stunning four-volume study on barnacles, without mentioning his seminal paper with Alfred Russel Wallace, or the forthcoming book. Stiff competition Origin was the book of the year - perhaps the book of the century - but it faced some stiff competition in 1859. Alfred Lord Tennyson printed the first Idylls of the King, his long cycle of Arthurian poems. John Stuart Mill wrote his mighty work On Liberty. Samuel Smiles delivered Self Help, a classic in a genre that has kept publishing houses alive ever since.

George Eliot published Adam Bede and Charles Dickens produced A Tale of Two Cities. It was the best of times and the worst of times for Charles Darwin . The book attracted enormous attention, much of it admiring. A century and a half later, in a book called Darwin's Dangerous Idea, the philosopher Daniel Dennett called evolution by natural selection acting upon random mutation "the single best idea anyone has ever had", but the proposition of evolutionary change was not new, even in 1859. The book appeared in a Christian world that was already aware - 50 years of debate and research by some of Darwin's critics had helped - that the Book of Genesis might not be taken literally. Lamarck, Wallace and Darwin all tackled the interesting question of why giraffes had long necks and the public took an interest. A popular song of 1861 sums it up: A deer with a neck that was longer by half Than the rest of his family's (try not to laugh) Which nobody can deny.

Darwin's version of the great giraffe argument made a splash, it made money - Darwin, says his biographer Janet Browne, was one of the first Victorians to negotiate what is now known as an advance against royalties - and it attracted interest far beyond the scientific community. Darwin received immediate support from that energetic churchman, naturalist and novelist Charles Kingsley, and later an admiring letter from Karl Marx. Bestseller Origin was a bestseller. The publisher John Murray ran off 1,250 copies and took orders for 1,500 even before the publication day, including 500 for a circulating library. A month later, he produced another 3,000 copies. Darwin helped sales along by a tactic now routinely employed by modern authors: he promoted it, says Browne, through "journals, newspapers, public lectures, controversial tracts and freethinking magazines". Altogether, before the copyright expired in 1901, the publishers had printed 56,000 copies in the original format and another 48,000 in the cheap edition.

This was not bad for a big fat volume that (apart from one diagram) failed the Alice in Wonderland test for a useful book: it had no pictures or conversations. On the other hand, the storm it provoked alarmed Darwin. He had worried about its possible effect on his friends Thomas Henry Huxley and Charles Lyell. The first had scientific reservations, the second religious scruples. Lyell maintained his loyalty to Darwin, and Huxley became Darwin's most ferocious supporter. Darwin certainly needed his support. One cruel review was published anonymously - by convention reviews were then unsigned - but the Darwin camp quickly identified the hand of Richard Owen, the titan of palaeontology. "Some of my relations say it cannot possibly be Owen's article, because the reviewer speaks so very highly of prof Owen. Poor, dear simple folk!" Darwin mused wryly afterwards, but he was hurt by attacks from scholars he had once respected. 'Old ladies of both sexes' Origin was also famously attacked in print by Bishop "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce, again, anonymously.

Huxley delivered an anonymous and highly favourable review in the Times and then defended Darwin against Wilberforce in the Westminster Review with some wonderful lines, including the classic jibe about the fears of "old ladies of both sexes" and that climactic and often quoted pronouncement: "Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as strangled snakes beside that of Heracles, and history records that wherever science and dogmatism have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched if not slain." Reviews such as Huxley's turned the Origin into a book that everybody wanted to read. Darwin launched a revolution in biology but his epic study was just a beginning. His Voyage of the Beagle remains a delightful, astonishing book, whereas Origin has become one of the classics of science, and like most of the classics of science - think of Copernicus and Galileo, Newton's Principia and Linnaeus's Systema Naturae - more people know about it than have ever opened its pages.

But Origin is part of the literary canon: Darwin joins Aristotle and St Augustine, Shakespeare, Milton and Stuart Mill, Dickens, Dostoevsky and Balzac in that pantheon of texts that provide the foundations of western culture. Origin meets the test of a great book: it mattered then, and it matters now. Its publication changed the world, and yet it can be read again and again, even in that changed world. The Origin of Species - Charles Darwin - Google Books The Origin of Species 284 Reviews First published in 1859, this landmark book on evolutionary biology was not the first to deal with the subject, but it went on to become a sensation—and a controversial one for many religious people who could not reconcile Darwin’s science with their faith. Darwin worked on the book for over 20 years before its publication. The radical crux of his scientific theory was the idea of natural selection, which meant that chance, not a divine Creator, played a great role in humanity's advancement and that individuals who weren't physically able to adapt with the greater populace died off.

Online Education Kit: 1859: Darwin Published On the Origin of Species, Proposing Continual Evolution of Species - National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) Online Education Kit: 1800's 1859: Darwin Published On the Origin of Species, Proposing Continual Evolution of Species The first printing of Charles Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, sold out in a matter of days. Darwin considered the volume a short abstract of the ideas he'd been developing about evolution by natural selection for decades. He'd been building on his ideas since his five-year journey in the 1830s to the South American coast, the Galapagos Islands, and other regions on the British ship H.M.S. Beagle. Darwin probably wouldn't have published in 1859 if not spurred by Alfred Russel Wallace's paper touching on the idea of natural selection. Wallace was a young naturalist who had developed his ideas while working in the islands of the Malay Archipelago. Darwin's exploratory survey on the H.M.S.

Beagle had brought him into contact with a wide variety of living organisms and fossils. The adaptations he saw in the finches and tortoises on the Galapagos Islands struck him particularly acutely. Darwin concluded that species change through natural selection, or - to use Wallace's phrase - through "the survival of the fittest" in a given environment. Darwin's book immediately attracted attention and controversy, not only from the scientific community, but also from the general public, who were ignited by the social and religious implications of the theory. Darwin eventually produced six editions of this book. In time, a growing understanding of genetics and of the fact that genes inherited from both parents remain distinct entities - even if the characteristics of parents appear to blend in their children - explained how natural selection could work and helped vindicate Darwin's proposal. Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life remains in print, in many languages. Natural Selection: Charles Darwin & Alfred Russel Wallace Natural Selection: Charles Darwin & Alfred Russel Wallace A visit to the Galapagos Islands in 1835 helped Darwin formulate his ideas on natural selection.

He found several species of finch adapted to different environmental niches. The finches also differed in beak shape, food source, and how food was captured. The genius of Darwin (left), the way in which he suddenly turned all of biology upside down in 1859 with the publication of the Origin of Species, can sometimes give the misleading impression that the theory of evolution sprang from his forehead fully formed without any precedent in scientific history. But as earlier chapters in this history have shown, the raw material for Darwin's theory had been known for decades. Geologists and paleontologists had made a compelling case that life had been on Earth for a long time, that it had changed over that time, and that many species had become extinct. At the same time, embryologists and other naturalists studying living animals in the early 1800s had discovered, sometimes unwittingly, much of the best evidence for Darwin's theory. Pre-Darwinian ideas about evolution It was Darwin's genius both to show how all this evidence favored the evolution of species from a common ancestor and to offer a plausible mechanism by which life might evolve.

Lamarck and others had promoted evolutionary theories, but in order to explain just how life changed, they depended on speculation. Typically, they claimed that evolution was guided by some long-term trend. Lamarck, for example, thought that life strove over time to rise from simple single-celled forms to complex ones. Many German biologists conceived of life evolving according to predetermined rules, in the same way an embryo develops in the womb. But in the mid-1800s, Darwin and the British biologist Alfred Russel Wallace independently conceived of a natural, even observable, way for life to change: a process Darwin called natural selection. The pressure of population growth Interestingly, Darwin and Wallace found their inspiration in economics. An English parson named Thomas Malthus published a book in 1797 called Essay on the Principle of Population in which he warned his fellow Englishmen that most policies designed to help the poor were doomed because of the relentless pressure of population growth. A nation could easily double its population in a few decades, leading to famine and misery for all. When Darwin and Wallace read Malthus, it occurred to both of them that animals and plants should also be experiencing the same population pressure.

It should take very little time for the world to be knee-deep in beetles or earthworms. But the world is not overrun with them, or any other species, because they cannot reproduce to their full potential. Many die before they become adults. They are vulnerable to droughts and cold winters and other environmental assaults. And their food supply, like that of a nation, is not infinite. Individuals must compete, albeit unconsciously, for what little food there is. The carrier pigeon (bottom left) and the Brunner pouter (bottom right) were derived from the wild rock pigeon (top). Selection of traits In this struggle for existence, survival and reproduction do not come down to pure chance. Darwin and Wallace both realized that if an animal has some trait that helps it to withstand the elements or to breed more successfully, it may leave more offspring behind than others. On average, the trait will become more common in the following generation, and the generation after that. As Darwin wrestled with natural selection he spent a great deal of time with pigeon breeders, learning their methods. He found their work to be an analogy for evolution. A pigeon breeder selected individual birds to reproduce in order to produce a neck ruffle.

Similarly, nature unconsciously "selects" individuals better suited to surviving their local conditions. Given enough time, Darwin and Wallace argued, natural selection might produce new types of body parts, from wings to eyes. Darwin and Wallace develop similar theory Darwin began formulating his theory of natural selection in the late 1830s but he went on working quietly on it for twenty years. He wanted to amass a wealth of evidence before publicly presenting his idea. During those years he corresponded briefly with Wallace (right), who was exploring the wildlife of South America and Asia. Wallace supplied Darwin with birds for his studies and decided to seek Darwin's help in publishing his own ideas on evolution. He sent Darwin his theory in 1858, which, to Darwin's shock, nearly replicated Darwin's own. Charles Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker arranged for both Darwin's and Wallace's theories to be presented to a meeting of the Linnaean Society in 1858. Darwin had been working on a major book on evolution and used that to develop On the Origins of Species, which was published in 1859.

Wallace, on the other hand, continued his travels and focused his study on the importance of biogeography. The book was not only a best seller but also one of the most influential scientific books of all time. Yet it took time for its full argument to take hold. Within a few decades, most scientists accepted that evolution and the descent of species from common ancestors were real. But natural selection had a harder time finding acceptance. In the late 1800s many scientists who called themselves Darwinists actually preferred a Lamarckian explanation for the way life changed over time. It would take the discovery of genes and mutations in the twentieth century to make natural selection not just attractive as an explanation, but unavoidable.

Question: Who wrote the book ‘On the Origin of Species’ in 1859?
Answer: Charles Darwin