The Origin of Species (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charles Darwin [259]
Charles Darwin’s Natural Selection: Being the Second Part of His Big Species Book Written from 1856 to 1858. Edited by Robert C. Stauffer. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975. The previously unpublished book Darwin was writing before he was forced by Wallace’s essay to write what he referred to as his “abstract”—that is, The Origin of Species.
Works on Darwin
The “Darwin Industry” has been so busy over the last quarter century that it would be impossible even to hint at the range and detail of the studies published during that time and, of course, across the century and a half since the 1859 publication of The Origin of Species. The following list is extremely selective, omitting many periodical essays of great importance and general interest. The books listed give a sense of the range of Darwin’s own writing, the best biographies, some contemporary commentary, some of the more important literary discussions, and significant explorations of the intellectual history and context of Darwin’s thought.
Barrett, Paul H., et al., eds. Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 1836-1844: Geology, Transmutation of Species, Metaphysical Enquiries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. An invaluable edition of Darwin’s notebooks, the source of his major work.
Beer, Gillian. Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot, and Nineteenth-century Fiction. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. Second edition: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. The most important treatment of Darwin as a writer and in relation to literature and culture.
Bowlby, John. Charles Darwin: A New Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. A controversial, fascinating biography from the point of view of a psychologist concerned with Darwin’s illnesses and the significance of his relations with his family.
Browne, E. Janet. Charles Darwin: A Biography. Vol. 1: Voyaging; Vol. 2: The Power of Place. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, 2002. This enormous, finely written biography is excellent in recounting the development of Darwin’s thought, the texture of his life, and the cultural, social context that helped shape both.
Chambers, Robert. Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and Other Evolutionary Writings. Edited by J. A. Secord. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. The sensational evolutionary precursor to Origin.
Darwin, Charles. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. 13 vols. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985-2003. This extraordinary edition is still not completed.
Darwin, Charles, and A. R. Wallace. Evolution by Natural Selection. With a forward by Gavin de Beer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958. Contains Darwin’s 1842 and 1844 drafts of his theory, and the essay Wallace sent to Darwin in 1858.
Darwin, Francis, ed. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter. 3 vols. London: John Murray, 1887. Edited by Darwin’s son.
Darwin, Francis, and A. C. Seward, eds. More Letters of Charles Darwin: A Record of His Work in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters. 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1903. Until the publication of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin these books edited by Darwin’s son were the definitive source of biographical materials about Darwin. They are characteristically expurgated of materials that the family wanted to keep quiet, but they remain interesting volumes for information about Darwin and about Victorian “life and letters” biographies.
Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. A tendentious and brilliant reading of Darwin’s theory as providing an algorithm for the development of life on this planet and a reduc tivist (and entirely secular) model for further scientific reading of the human mind and human behavior.
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