A fine association copy. This copy belonged to the English naturalist, Frederick DuCane Godman (1834-1919).
Norman notes that Darwin “compared a man’s physical and psychological characteristics to similar traits in apes and other animals, showing how even man’s mind and moral sense could have developed through evolutionary processes”. The Descent of Man is the first of Darwin’s works to include the term evolution. It was incorporated into the sixth edition of Origin … the following year. Indeed, “The Descent, understood by Darwin as a sequel to the Origin, was written with a maturity and depth of learning that marked Darwin’s status as an élite gentleman of science” (ODNB). In this work, he fully established the importance of sexual selection, and “set out a definite family tree for humans, tracing their affinity with the Old World monkeys” (ibid).
In the mid-nineteenth century, British naturalists were a small community and Godman corresponded with Darwin, who offered encouragement, and the recorded letters were all written in the years leading up to the publication of Descent. It was at the prompting of another eminent naturalist, Henry Bates, that Godman wrote to Darwin in the first place. Godman’s groundbreaking Biologia Centrali-Americana demonstrated that a complete study of the fauna and flora of Central America revealed patterns of distribution of species and evolution. Published over the course of 35 years (1879-1915), Godman’s extraordinary work ran to sixty volumes.
Garrison-Morton, 170; Freeman, 937; Norman, 599; cf. PMM, 169 & 344.
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