Books

John Murray, London 1868. . First edition, second issue, 2 volumes, 8vo., viii, 411, [1], 32; viii, 486, [2] pp., with publisher's lists at the end of each vol., original green cloth gilt, illustrated throughout, tiny hole to spine vol. ii affecting the 's' of 'domestication', foxing to endpapers, a very good set. Featuring the first occurrence of the phrase 'survival of the fittest'. Originally intended as the first two chapters in a larger work on the origin of the species (he viewed the book of that name as simply an abstract of a more substantial project), these were the only ones published in his lifetime. With detailed facts and lengthy discussion, the work includes what Darwin believed to be new ideas of pangenesis, but the topics of sexual selection and human evolution were excluded from these already thick volumes. Despite their size, the works sold briskly (Desmond & Moore, Darwin (London: 1991), p.550).After running through the first issue in just a week (Freeman,…

The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication is a book by Charles Darwin that presents his observations on the descendency and variations in animals and plants during the domestication process, highlighting the role of artificial selection.