"This edition of The Origin of Species is a welcome addition to the field. This volume brings together all the important primary material necessary to understanding Darwin and his milieu, giving students of Victorian science and the history of evolutionary biology a wonderful resource. Carroll combines Darwin's own work-including excerpts from his notebooks and letters, as well as appropriate passages from The Descent of Man-with excerpts from important precursors, supporters, and fellow scientists. The edition, in bringing all these materials together for the first time, is invaluable."

--Lesley Cormack, University of Alberta

"A pioneer in applying Darwinian thought to the analysis of literary texts, Joseph Carroll makes the Darwinian revolution beautifully intelligible in this edition by providing both a fine introduction and an illuminating collection of historical materials."

--Don Brown, University of California, Santa Barbara

Publisher Web Site, October, 2003

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, in which he writes of his theories of evolution by natural selection, is one of the most important works of scientific study ever published.

This unabridged edition also includes a rich selection of primary source material: substantial selections from Darwin's other works (Autobiography, notebooks, letters, Voyage of the Beagle, and The Descent of Man) and selections from Darwin's sources and contemporaries (excerpts from Genesis, Paley, Lamarck, Spencer, Lyell, Malthus, Huxley, and Wallace).