Spine and Cover for Alfred Russel Wallace's Darwinism. An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection with Some of its Applications.

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Spine and Cover

Alfred Russel Wallace's Darwinism. An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection with Some of its Applications.

1889

"Original green cloth, gilt rules and lettering to spine, dark-green endpapers"

Octavo

John Wilson & Son, Publisher

Provenance: John Fowles (1926-2005, his bookplate by Reynolds Stone on front free endpaper); "R.J.D." (bookplate on upper pastedown); Audrey Reade (inscription on front free endpaper).

[See commentary below]

Image and text included by permission of Sotheran's of Sackville Street, London (The longest established antiquarian booksellers in the world — York 1761).

"Thirty years after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Wallace advocates a "pure Darwinism", using examples from the wild around the world to expand upon Darwin's dependence on evidence drawn from domesticated animals and plants. He tackles the arguments against evolution and considers in depth the concepts of natural selection and the survival of the fittest. This work, based upon lectures given in the United States in 1885-1887, demonstrates that Wallace was not only a staunch ally of Darwin, but an important evolutionary theorist in his own right. This copy is from the library of the novelist John Fowles, whose interest in Darwin and Darwinism was learnt from his father, Robert Fowles, who "thought highly of Charles Darwin and Thomas Hardy, both great nineteenth century materialists who emphasized determinism and a fateful lack of free will. Both influenced John's later work" (E. Warburton John Fowles (London: 2004), p. 14). An enthusiastic natural historian since childhood, a fascination with the natural world and the Darwinian forces governing both it and human society informed Fowles' work, particularly the novel The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), whose protagonist Charles Smithson is an amateur palaeontologist and proponent of Darwin's views." — Sotheran's site.

Bibliography

Wallace, Alfred Russel. Darwinism. An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection with Some of its Applications. London and New York: John Wilson and Son, University Press [Cambridge, MA] for Macmillan and Co., 1889.

Last modified 19 March 2008