Books

First edition, first issue, with "that" spelled correctly on the first line of page 208 (misspelled in the second issue). The Expression of the Emotions "appeared in November, and was awaited with such interest that over 5,000 copies were sold on the day of publication" (Huxley, p. 96). It was "written, in part at least, as a confutation of the idea that the facial muscles of expression in man were a special endowment" (Freeman), a subject originally intended for The Descent of Man. Darwin invited the photographer Oscar Rejlander to make comparative studies of laughter and crying, obtained photographs of asylum inmates from the asylum director James Crichton-Browne, and consulted the French physiologist Guillaume Duchenne regarding his electrical research on the facial muscles. The plates are among the earliest commercially reproduced photographs in a scientific book. They are lettered with Roman numerals in this copy; another state is known in Arabic numerals, without priority of issue. Freeman suggests that the Arabic numeral plates were printed first but notes that "the two states seem to occur at random in the two issues of the text, and Darwin's own copy, at Cambridge, has the Roman" (Freeman). Octavo. Original dark green cloth, spine lettered in gilt, covers panelled in blind, black endpapers. With 7 tissue-guarded heliotype plates, of which 3 folding, woodcut illustrations within text. With 4 pp. publisher's advertisements dated November 1872 at rear. Ownership initials in pencil to front free endpaper verso. Wear to corners and spine ends, cloth and gilt bright and clean, inner hinges split but holding firm, light foxing to endleaves, first gathering opened roughly along lower edge, cords occasionally visible: a very good copy. Freeman 1141; Garrison-Morton 4975; Norman 600. Leonard Huxley, Charles Darwin, 1921.

In this seminal work, Charles Darwin examines the genetic similarities among humans and animals, providing insights into the biological origins of their emotions.