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

Description:

Fourth edition, eighth thousand. ‘The most important biological work ever written.’ This edition was extensively altered, and it was in this one that the date of the first edition, as given on the verso of the half-title, is corrected from October 1st to November 24th, 1859. The fourth edition was of 1,500 copies. This copy has Freeman's earlier binding variant b, with the 32-page publisher's advertisements at rear dated January, 1865.

Freeman, 385, variant b.

Condition

8vo in 12s, orig. publisher’s green cloth, wear to corners, recased with new endpapers, rebacked, orig. spine preserved, gilt title to spine, blind stamped decoration to boards. Top of title page cropped and restored (without loss of text) and 5cm closed tear from inner margin neatly repaired. Outer blank margin of page 215 carelessly opened with minor loss. Occasional light foxing. A very good copy. From the library of Bernard d’Abrera with his name to endpaper with a few of his critical and irreverent pencil annotations to the text. A few other marginal markings. Earlier owner's name 'G.H.W. Sullivan, Royal Engineers' to top of page v (Contents).

Bernard d’Abrera (1940-2017) was a British-born Australian philosopher of science, lepidopterist, photographer, illustrator and publisher, famed for his magnum opus, ‘Butterflies of the World’ (1961-2010), the sole modern multi-volume work on world butterflies by a single author and illustrator since Adalbert Seitz (1860-1938).

A fearless Darwin ‘heretic’, d’Abrera has been described by Dr Thomas Emmel, director of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, as ‘a controversial biologist but one whose remarkable lifetime accomplishments publishing an illustrated catalogue of butterflies of the world must be admired for a unique contribution that will likely never be duplicated.'