DARWIN, Charles.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Journal of Researches The definitive version of Darwin's first published and most widely read book. This botanical and zoological travelogue outlines much of the fieldwork which led to the Origin of Species. The text is the same as the first Murray edition (1845) but includes new preliminaries and a postscript, and is the first in the distinctive green Murray cloth.The Journal (now popularly known under its later title The Voyage of the Beagle) first appeared as the third volume of Fitzroy's Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle, published in May 1839. "The five years of the voyage were the most important event in Darwin's intellectual life and in the history of biological science" (DSB). Darwin himself would state that "the voyage of the 'Beagle' has been by far the most important event in my life, and has determined my whole career... I have always felt that I owe to the voyage the first real training or education of my mind; I was led to attend closely to several branches of natural history, and thus my powers of observation were improved" (Life and Letters I, p. 61).

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