On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

1860. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1860.

8vo, (7 5/8 x 5 inches; 195 x 125 mm). 432 pp. Folding lithographed diagram (speciation tree) facing p. 108. Original dark green bead-grain cloth with covers decoratively stamped in blind and spine ruled in gilt and blind and lettered in gilt. Original dark brown coated endpapers, front free endpaper removed; early ink signature J.F. Oakes dated 186 (8?); boookplate of Isador H. Coriat and stamp of Edmund Brill with inscription. Professionally conserved: hinges strengthened, head and foot of backstrip renewed.

§ First issue of the first American edition. One of the most influential (truncated) scientific works of the nineteenth century, "On the Origin of Species" was (and still is) one of the most controversial books ever printed. In it "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" (Printing and the Mind of Man). Although published the same year as the second English edition, the text of the first American edition (with the two stereo reprints of the same year) is identical to the first English edition (Freeman 373), with the whale-bear story surviving intact. Freeman 377. Grolier/Horblit 23b ("the most influential scientific work of the nineteenth century"). Printing and the Mind of Man 344b (describing the 1859 first edition). (Inventory #: 126351)