IS  MAN  AN  APE  OR  AN  ANGEL?

From the holdings of
the Department of Special Collections

KENNETH SPENCER RESEARCH LIBRARY

 

 

Origin of Species - 1859

The first edition of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published in London on November 24, 1859; after deducting author's review and legal deposit copies from the edition of 1,250 copies, all remaining 1,170 copies were taken up by booksellers on that same day. A second London edition with slight revisions appeared on January 6, 1860. The first US edition, based on the London first, was published in the middle of June 1860. The first German edition appeared in 1860, and the third London edition was published in April 1861. Six editions in all—1859, 1860, 1861, 1866, 1869 and 1872—were published by John Murray in London and variously revised by Darwin himself. Morse Peckham, who produced a variorum edition of the Origin, wrote ". . . the sixth edition is nearly a third as long again as the first."

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