Darwin, Charles Robert
Independently, the naturalist A. R. Wallace had worked out a concept of evolution similar to Darwin's. Wallace sent a paper outlining his theory to Darwin in 1858, and its striking coincidences with Darwin's work led Darwin's friends to move to assure that the more cautious Darwin, who had been slow to publish, would receive credit for the independence and priority of his ideas. The next year Darwin set forth the structure of his theory and massive support for it in the superbly organized On the Origin of Species, supplemented and elaborated in his many later books, notably The Descent of Man (1871). He also formulated a theory of the origin of coral reefs.
See J. T. Costa, ed, The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species (2009); Darwin's correspondence, ed. by F. Burkhardt and S. Smith (25 vol., 1985–) and letters of Darwin and Henslow, ed. by N. Barlow (1967); G. Chancellor and J. Van Wyhe, ed. Charles Darwin's Notebooks from the Voyage of the Beagle (2009); his autobiography (ed. by N. Barlow, 1958) and Life and Letters (ed. by F. Darwin, 1887; repr. with intro. by G. G. Simpson, 1962); biographies by G. Wichler (tr. 1961), A. Desmond and J. Moore (1991), J. Browne (2 vol., 1995–2002), and P. Johnson (2012); J. Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner (rev. ed. 1958); A. Moorehead, Darwin and the Beagle (1969, rev. ed. 1979); P. Appleman, ed., Darwin (1970, repr. 1983); D. L. Hull, Darwin and His Critics (1983); R. J. Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (1989); R. Dawkins, River Out of Eden (1995); D. C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995); N. Eldredge, Reinventing Darwin (1995); S. Jones, Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of Species
Updated (2000); J. Browne, Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography (2008); A. Desmond and J. Moore, Darwin's Sacred Cause (2009, repr. 2011); R. Milner, Darwin's Universe (2009); G. Levine, Darwin the Writer (2011); R. Stott, Darwin's Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution (2012); J. Costa, Darwin's Backyard (2017); R. Wesson, Darwin's First Theory (2017).
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