Book: Paperback | 5.07 x 7.79in | 128 pages | ISBN 9780140433906 | 24 Sep 2002 | Penguin Classic | 18 - AND UP
Self-taught and ambitious, Charles Darwin is most famous for his groundbreaking-and to some still controversial-theory of evolution and natural selection. In Autobiographies the great scientist weighs his career and his life.
Darwin's memoir concentrates on his public career and towering scientific achievements but is also full of moments from his private life. There are lively anecdotes about his family and contemporaries, as well as haunting memories of a mother he never knew, a hot-tempered father he could never please, and lingering doubts about the fitness of the genes he was passing on to his heirs.
Autobiographies comprises a fragment Darwin wrote at the age of twenty-nine and the longer "Recollections" of 1876, showing a man toward the end of his life who stands isolated, dogged by illness and self-doubt.
Autobiographies
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Introduction
Further Reading
Note on the Texts
An autobiographical fragment
1876 May 31 - Recollections of the Development of my Mind and Character
Cambridge, 1828-1831
Voyage of the Beagle: from Dec. 27, 1831 to Oct. 2, 1836
From my return to England Oct. 2 1836 to my marriage Jan. 29 1839
Religious Belief
From my marriage, Jan. 29 1839, and residence in Upper Gower St. to our leaving London and settling at Down, Sep. 14 1842
Residence at Down from Sep. 14 1842 to the present time 1876
My Several Publications
Bibliographical Register
Contact: Sarah Allchin on 020 7010 3466 or sarah.allchin@penguin.co.uk
Autobiographies
By Charles Darwin
Edited by Michael Neve and Sharon Messenger
To be published in Penguin Classics on 8 August 2002, priced £6.99
"The depth of the implications of the theory of evolution by natural selection was being exchanged -for gossip." Michael Neve, from the Introduction
Charles Darwin revolutionised man's notion of existence, of the surrounding world and of his own lifetime. In this new edition of Darwin's Autobiographies, a central paradox is set up between the proposed finality of existence after death and Darwin's desire to memorialise himself through writing. Written to be read only by his family, the Autobiographies explore how Darwin himself fell under the scrutiny of his own theories of natural selection and the survival of the fittest...
As a man who believed in achievement through hard work alone, was he going against his theory of natural selection?
As a man suffering from persistent ill health, was he one of the unfortunate ones who were not carrying features advantageous to survival? If so, were his children too?
Darwin's personal religious doubt, fuelled by his discoveries, became the subject of much public debate, a crisis that greatly affected his marriage to a woman unwilling to part with her Christian beliefs. The Autobiographies offer a valuable insight into the personal world of Darwin showing how his radical evolutionary theories threatened the stability of his family life as well as Victorian society.
CHARLES DARWIN, destined to follow a career in either medicine or the Anglican Church, rejected both to join the HMS Beagle as a self-financing, independent naturalist. On returning to England in 1836 he began to write up his theories and observations, the most famous of which On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published in 1859. In 1842 Darwin moved to Down House in the north Kent countryside with his family and he lived there for the rest of his life. During this time he was socially reclusive and continually ill. He died in 1882 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
MICHAEL NEVE graduated in history from Christ's College, Cambridge and is currently based at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. He teaches and researches the history of psychiatry and the history of life sciences. With Janet Brown he co-edited Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, also for Penguin Classics.
SHARON MESSENGER studied social history at the University of Liverpool, graduating in 1992, and completed her Ph.D in 1999. She is a research officer at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London.
Contact: Sarah Allchin on 020 7010 3466 or sarah.allchin@penguin.co.uk
