A first edition, first issue of Darwin's second most important work

DARWIN, Charles.

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.

London: John Murray, 1871.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002274

8vo (189 x 129 mm). viii, 423 [1], 16; viii, [2], 475 [1], 16 pp., including half-titles, publisher's catalogue dated January 1871 at end of each volume, and several woodcut illustrations in text. Original publishers green cloth (spine of vol. II somewhat rubbed, corners bumped, boards of vol. II little spotted/stained, cloth at extremities and spine ends a bit worn), front endpapers cracked and with tears in vol. II, rear endpapers partly cracked, binding weak, a few gatherings in vol. I loosening but holding. Vol. II partially unopened. Internally very little age-toned, occasional weak pencil annotations throughout. Provenance: Mary and Henry Hotchkiss (bookplates to front pastedowns of both volumes). A good, unsophisticated set overall. ----

Freeman 245, Norman 599, Sparrow 48; Garrison-Morton 170 - First edition, first issue of both volumes (with the errata on verso of title-leaf in vol. II and with the first word "transmitted" on p. 297 in vol. I). Twelve years after the publication of the Origin, Darwin made good his promise to "throw light on the origin of man and his history" by publishing the present work, in which he compared man's physical and psychological traits to similar ones in apes and other animals, and showed how even man's mind and moral sense could have evolved through processes of natural selection. In discussing man's ancestry, Darwin did not claim that man was directly descended from apes as we know them today, but stated simply that the extinct ancestors of Homo sapiens would have to be classed among the primates. This statement was (and is) widely misinterpreted by the popular press, however, and caused a furor second only to that raised by the Origin. Darwin also added an essay on sexual selection, i.e. the preferential chances of mating that some individuals of one sex have over their rivals because of special characteristics, leading to the accentuation and transmission of those characteristics (Norman).

Sold