Darwin, Charles.

8vo (215 x 137mm.), 2 volumes, first edition, one of 1,500 copies (of which this is one of 1,250 first issue copies), presentation copy with paper slip on fly-leaf of volume 1 with autograph inscription ("From the author"), 43 woodcut illustrations, five errata on p.vi of volume 1 and nine in seven lines on p.viii of volume 2, 32pp. advertisements dated April 1867 at the end of volume 1, one leaf of advertisements dated February 1868 at the end of volume 2, original smooth green cloth decorated in blind and with spines lettered gilt (with first issue imprint), dark green endpapers, upper hinges slightly cracked, remains of bookplates on upper paste-downs, slight edge-wear to cloth, tiny spotting to spine

Freeman 877

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing, when appropriate.
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Presentation copy of the only section of Darwin's expanded work on the origin of species published in his lifetime.

Variation under Domestication is in essence a full statement of the facts on which the theories of the Origin were based. It took Darwin many years to write, and provides overwhelming evidence for the ubiquity of variation in the natural world, as well as offering up his provisional hypothesis of pangenesis, aiming to explain how heritable traits were passed from parents to offspring. It is the first time that the phrase "survival of the fittest" appears in Darwin's published work. This first issue was published on 30 January 1868. Demand from the reading public was extraordinarily and unexpectedly strong, with all copies sold within a week. A second issue appeared in February.

Darwin disliked books with uncut edges, so such presentation copies are slightly shorter and narrower than the regular edition (cf. Sir John Lubbock's copy, also with slip similarly inscribed by the author, lot 135 in Darwin's Century: the Jeremy Norman Collection...concerning the Theory of Evolution..., Sotheby's, 11 December 1992)