the origin of species by natural selection

The translator was Sergīeĭ Aleksandrovich Rachinskīĭ, a professor of botany in Moscow. The book pictured below is the rare first edition of the first Russian translation of Origin. Royer not only added a lengthy preface but also many footnotes. The first French translation of Origin was by Clémence Royer, a French author who was primarily self-taught and wrote and lectured on science, politics, and women’s rights. Bronn did not entirely agree with Darwin’s theory of evolution and added his own footnotes and a concluding chapter to the translation. It was translated by Heinrich Georg Bronn, a naturalist and paleontologist. The first German translation of Origin was published in 1860. Each of the intervals between the horizontal lines, Roman numerals I through XIV, represents one thousand generations. Each of the letters, A through L horizontally, represents a species of a genus. The plate below, from the 1860 American edition of Origin is a diagram showing Darwin’s theory of evolution. The text is the same as the London 1859 edition. Although Harpers was also considering publishing the book, Appleton published their edition in January 1860. The book below is the first American edition of Origin. In addition, some translators felt it necessary to annotate their texts to provide more explanation.

The complex nature of the text, as well as the difficulties of translating scientific terms were issues in preparing translations. The National Library of Medicine has recently acquired a number of interesting editions of Origin.ĭarwin wanted Origin to be translated and available to scientists all over the world and in his lifetime the book was translated into 11 languages including German, French, Russian, and Danish. The Origin is Darwin’s great work and considered to be one of the most important books on biology ever printed. From the beginning, the book was popular and the first edition sold out on the first day. On November 24, 1859, Charles Darwin’s On the origin of species by means of natural selection… was published in London.

The origin of species by natural selection