[CHAMBERS, Robert (1802–1871)]

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

(London: John Churchill, 1853)

8vo; pp. x, 325, [3], lxvii, [1], [8b with 32 pages of ads, dated June 1853]

Robert Chambers’ anonymously published best-seller Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation is the most significant work of pre-Darwinian evolutionary theory.

As Darwin himself saw it, the book prepared the public mind for his theory of evolution by natural selection. Chambers work was, of course, more speculative and far reaching – connecting stellar evolution to the transmuation of species. In part owing to its anonymous publication it created what Jim Secord has called a ‘Victorian Sensation’.

This copy with a 2-page letter from Chambers laid in, dated 11 April 1863, to a Mr Crook concerning the Lord Advocate James Moncreiff.

This 1853 tenth edition was the first to feature illustrations and therefore the most attractive of the many editions published through the nineteenth century.

Fair condition: this copy retains the original cloth binding, though the latter is in poor condition, stained and somewhat misshapen; contents good.