Books

First edition, second issue with "htat" misprint on the first line of page 208. One of 7000 copies. Publisher's green cloth with decorative borders in blind to front and rear boards, titles and decorations in gilt to spine, green endpapers, seven Heliotype Plates numbered in Arabic. Very good or better with light wear to spine hinges and corners, a bit of toning to spine, some spotting to the plates on pages 180 and 264, a few small notes in pencil to a couple pages, and a touch of soiling to bottom edge of text block. Overall, a solid copy of Darwin's "forgotten masterpiece," with very well-preserved plates. Freeman 1142. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals expands on Darwin's theories raised in On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871), arguing that there is an evolutionary explanation for the human expression of emotions. The book was originally intended by Darwin to be a chapter in The Descent of Man, but grew until it was necessary to publish the work separately. An influential text in the field of psychology, the book has also been described as "a pivotal turning point in the history of book illustration, right up there with Alice in Wonderland" (The Atlantic). With seven plates of heliotypes that represent various human emotions, The Expression of the Emotions was one of the first scientific books to include photographs. These photographs were provided by a handful of photographers and researchers, including Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne, Adolph Kindermann, George Charles Wallich, James Crichton-Browne, and Oscar Rejlander. Rejlander contributed nineteen of the thirty photographs in the book, including the crying baby photo, later dubbed "Ginx's baby," which became incredibly popular in its time. Interestingly, Darwin's research for the book prompted him to circulate one of the first scientific questionnaires, which he used to gauge people's ability to identify a handful of core emotions.

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