On the Origin of Species

A Facsimile of the First Edition

Introduction by Ernst Mayr

This, the most interesting and helpful edition of Darwin’s major work, is now available in an inexpensive paperback edition. It is written with a clarity, forcefulness, and conciseness not found in any subsequent revision. For modern reading and for reference, it is the standard edition of Darwin’s greatest work.

America’s foremost evolutionary biologist, Ernst Mayr, provides this edition with an introduction which places Darwin in his historical and philosophical context as no writer has done before. As Science notes, “few if any persons are so well qualified as Harvard’s Ernst Mayr to execute so helpfully and gracefully the delicate task of writing a worthy foreword to such a classic.”

“The Origin is one of the most important books ever published, and a knowledge of it should be a part of the intellectual equipment of every educated person… The book will endure in future ages so long as a knowledge of science persists among mankind. It re- mains to be said that the edition here reviewed is very worthily pro- duced and contains a little-known picture of Darwin.” Nature

“It was a very happy idea to publish a facsimile of the first edition of On the Origin of Species, the price of copies of the original edition has reached the thousand dollar bracket, and in contemporary literature all page-references are to the original pagination, which was not followed in previous reprints of the first edition. Now, with this very reasonably priced and beautifully produced book, not only historians of science but also biologists will have the opportunity of following the fascinating thought-trails, still far from fully explored, of that remarkable man Darwin.” Science