Landmark Books in All Fields
ItemID: #120939
Cost: $15,000.00

On the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF DARWIN'S ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, "THE MOST IMPORTANT SINGLE WORK IN SCIENCE"

DARWIN, Charles. On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection… New York: D. Appleton, 1860. Octavo, original brown cloth. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. $15,000.

First American edition, first issue, of "certainly the most important biological book ever written" (Freeman)—the book that introduced the idea the world would come to know as "evolution"—published just one year after the London first edition.

"This, the most important single work in science, brought man to his true place in nature" (Heralds of Science 199). Darwin "was intent upon carrying Lyell's demonstration of the uniformity of natural causes over into the organic world… In accomplishing this Darwin not only drew an entirely new picture of the workings of organic nature; he revolutionized our methods of thinking and our outlook on the natural order of things. The recognition that constant change is the order of the universe had been finally established and a vast step forward in the uniformity of nature had been taken" (PMM 344). First issue, with only two quotations opposite title page. Freeman 377. See Horblit, 23b; Dibner, 199; PMM 344b.

Scattered light spotting, as often, with minor restoration to joints and spine ends. An extremely good copy in the original cloth.

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