Charles Darwin, 1872

DARWIN, Charles. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray, 1872.

“Jusqu’à votre publication je n’avais rien lu ou entendu de raisonnable sur cette question. Vous avez ouvert la voie, et surtout l’hérédité, ici comme ailleurs, explique beaucoup, mais il y a encore à perfectionner et completer en suivant vos indications.” (14 January 1873 letter from De Candolle to Darwin upon reading the present volume).

Presentation copy of the first edition to the great French-Swiss botanist Alphonse Pyramus de Candolle, inscribed in Murray’s clerk’s hand “From the Author”. This is Darwin’s great book on the biology of the emotions and psychological evolution and represents the foundation of the science of ethology. Edward O. Wilson wrote: “this book is rich and accurate enough in interpretation to have served as part of the foundation of modern psychology [and] led in the twentieth century to the development of new disciplines in the behavioral sciences. They include ethology, the study of the whole patterns of behaviors under natural conditions that allow animals to express their complete hereditary range of adaptive behavior; sociobiology, the analysis of the biological basis of all forms of social behavior; and behavioral ecology, the study of the means by which behavior adapts animals to the demands and opportunities of their particular environments” (From So Simple a Beginning, pp 1253-4).

Expressions followed Darwin’s Descent of Man, published in 1871, and was originally intended to be a chapter in that work until Darwin expanded it into a major text in itself. “With this book Darwin founded the study of ethology (animal behaviour) and conveyance of information (communication theory), and made a major contribution to psychology” (DSB). The plates are from photographs by O.G. Rejlander, G.B.A. Duchenne de Boulogne, and others. The plates in this copy are numbered in Arabic, presumed to be the first issue. Second issue of the text, with the misprint ‘htat’ on p 208. There are no other textual differences between the two issues.

Alphonse Pyramus De Candolle first met Charles Darwin in 1839 and they had an extensive correspondence beginning in 1859, when Darwin sent him a copy of the Origin. Darwin sent De Candolle presentation copies of virtually all of his works and 33 letters between the two are recorded in the Darwin Correspondence Project. After receiving the present volume, De Candolle replies with an effusive letter reflecting on his own shyness until the age of 55—and how vanity around physical expression may have been a cause, as perhaps it was for J.J. Rousseau—and on the heredity of intellectual ability. This 14 January 1873 is several pages long and worth reading in full as it demonstrates the extraordinary appreciation Darwin and De Candolle had for each other (DCP 8737). Freeman 1141; Garrison and Morton 4975; Norman 600; Truthful Lens 43.

Octavo (187 x 120mm). With seven heliotype plates, three of which are folding; and 31 wood-engravings in text. 4-page publisher’s list at end dated November 1872 (pl. 6 with a little edge-creasing and a foxmark). Original blindstamped green cloth, spine lettered in gilt (hinges cracked, a little bubbling/denting to cloth). Provenance: Alphonse Pyramus de Candolle, 1806–1893 (presentation copy inscribed by Murray’s clerk opposite the title page: “From the Author”; “Bibliothéque De Candolle” printed label on front pastedown) – Bibliothèque du Conservatoire botanique de Genève (the same printed label records the acquisition of Candolle’s library in 1921 for the Geneva Botanical Conservatory library).