Publication of Darwin's theory

Darwin's ideas developed rapidly from the return in 1836 of the Beagle survey expedition. By December 1838 he had developed the principles of his theory. At that time similar ideas brought others disgrace and association with the revolutionary mob. He was conscious of the need to answer all likely objections before publishing. While he continued with research as his "prime hobby", his priority was an immense amount of work on geology and analysing and publishing findings from the Beagle expedition. This was repeatedly delayed by illness.

Natural history at that time was dominated by clerical naturalists whose income came from the Established Church of England and who saw the science of the day as revealing God's plan. Darwin found three close allies: Charles Lyell, Joseph Dalton Hooker and Thomas Huxley. Books by the eminent geologist Charles Lyell had influenced the young Darwin during the voyage, and he then befriended Darwin who he saw as a supporter of his ideas of gradual geological processes with continuing divine Creation of species. By the 1840s Darwin became friends with the young botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, who had followed his father into that science, and after going on a survey voyage used his contacts to eventually find a position. In the 1850s Darwin met Thomas Huxley, an ambitious naturalist who had returned from a long survey trip but lacked the family wealth or contacts to find a career and who joined the progressive group around Herbert Spencer fighting to make science a profession, freed from the clerics.

Darwin made attempts to open discussions about his theory with his close scientific colleagues. In January 1842 Darwin sent a tentative description of his ideas in a letter to Lyell, then prepared a "Pencil Sketch" of his theory. He worked up his "Sketch" into an "Essay" in 1844, and eventually persuaded Hooker to read a copy in January 1847. His geology books and publication of Beagle findings were completed in 1846, when he began what became eight years of research into classification of barnacle species, exploring the immense amount of variation in nature.

In September 1854 Darwin had the last of his barnacle monographs ready for publication, and he turned his attention fully to questions about how species originated. He freely discussed his intention to write a book on the subject, and planned avenues of research with other scientists. He went over his previous notes and writings on the topic, and drew up proposals for investigations and research into the implications of his theory. One topic was explaining geographical distribution of organisms; he got information from international correspondence, and experimented on the viability of methods of dispersal. He widened his investigations into variability in nature, and experimented on plant hybridisation and cross-fertilisation.[4]

Variation under domestication became a major topic of research: in 1855 he began to develop a web of contacts, both in the UK and worldwide, to get information on the origins and variation of domesticated animals, particularly poultry, ducks, rabbits, and pigeons. He got extensive information, specimens and ideas from Edward Blyth in India, who put him in contact with Edgar Leopold Layard in South Africa. At the suggestion of William Yarrell, Darwin began pigeon breeding at Down House to investigate varieties of domestic pigeons, and gained access to the expertise of William Bernhard Tegetmeier who was glad to research aspects of interest to Darwin. From March, he also got information and specimens from his relative William Darwin Fox who bred poultry and ducks at his rectory in the parish of Delamere, Cheshire.[4]

In 1856 he was gradually bringing his friends round towards accepting evolution as a process, but was far from convincing them about the mechanism, when Wallace's entry into the discussion brought a new urgency to publication.

Alfred Russel Wallace, a naturalist working as a specimen collector in Borneo, spent Christmas 1854 visiting Sir James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak, then during the ensuing rainy season lived alone in a little Dayak house, with only one Malay servant as cook. He recalled, "during the evening and wet days, I had nothing to do but look over my books". He had already read Lyell's Principles of Geology which opposed Lamarck by arguing that the fossil record showed no progress. Wallace had also read the 1845 second edition of Darwin's Journal of Researches which hinted at evolution by describing the "wonderful relationship in the same continent" between fossil and extant species, which would "throw more light on the appearance of organic beings on our earth, and their disappearance from it, than any other class of facts". In it, Darwin had described how species unique to the Galápagos Islands "all show a marked relationship with those of America" despite its distance.[5][6]

Wallace had also been impressed by Pictet's studies of palaeontology, and was now annoyed by a recent article by Edward Forbes which dismissed evolutionary ideas and instead proposed that species were created in a pattern showing a divine plan of polarity. In February, Wallace completed his paper "On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species" which was published in September 1855 in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History.[5]

This "Sarawak paper" countered Forbes, and showed Wallace's opinions. He incorporated points from Lyell, Darwin, Pictet and others, including Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. It combined these with Wallace's own observations to support his conclusion that "Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a closely allied species". This was a theory of a succession of species, but referred to "creation" rather than explicitly proposing an evolutionary mechanism [in 1905 Wallace recalled that he left descent to be inferred]. Brooke read it as either a series of creations or one species growing into another, and in 1856 told Wallace he had no objection to the latter. Wallace had told him that the paper was to "feel the pulse of scientific men" about the hypothesis, and Brooke was indignant at the suggestion that "bigotry & intolerance" would be aroused by novel views: this would explain Wallace's ambiguity.[7][8] Lyell's resistance to Darwin's evolutionary ideas was shaken by the paper; in November 1855 Lyell began writing species notebooks, starting with a note about Wallace.[9] On 8 December Edward Blyth wrote from Calcutta to ask Darwin for his views on the paper. Blyth thought it "Good! Upon the whole!" and said "according to his theory, the various domestic races of animals have been fairly developed into species." It is not known when Darwin read this letter.[10]

During December 1855, Darwin extended his research into variation under domestication with letters to nearly 30 people around the world,[11] requesting their help in obtaining specimens of "Any domestic breed or race, of Poultry, Pigeons, Rabbits, Cats, & even dogs, if not too large, which has been bred for many generations in any little visited region."[12] As Blyth had suggested earlier, Darwin wrote on 9 December to Edgar Leopold Layard in South Africa, and said that he was "collecting all the facts & reasoning which I could, in regard to the variation & origin of species", particularly pigeons.[13] On 24 December Darwin wrote to the diplomat Sir Charles Murray in Persia, similarly saying he had "for many years been working on the perplexed subject of the origin of varieties & species, & for this purpose I am endeavouring to study the effects of domestication".[14] Letters also went to Brooke, and to Wallace via his agent Samuel Stevens. In August 1856 Wallace told Stevens that specimens for Darwin were included in a shipment. In November Darwin wrote to tell William Bernhardt Tegetmeier that a box of Persian poultry specimens from Murray had arrived, and "Mr Wallace is collecting in the Malay Archipelago".[11][15]

Wallace's "Sarawak paper" was included in the July–December 1855 volume of the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. Darwin jotted comments in his copy of this volume: "Laws of Geograph. Distrib. nothing very new", and "Uses my simile of tree— It seems all creation with him", but "he puts the facts in striking point of view". He noted Wallace's point that geological knowledge was imperfect, and commented "put generation for creation & I quite agree".[10] In December 1857 Darwin still thought Wallace was proposing creation as an explanation, and told him "I believe I go much further than you".[16][17]

When Lyell and his wife visited the Darwins at Downe from 13 to 16 April 1856, Darwin explained his theory to Lyell, who then wrote up notes headed "With Darwin: On the Formation of Species by Natural Selection", with pigeons as one example. At another Down House party on 26–27 April, Darwin had long discussions with his guests Joseph Dalton Hooker, Thomas Henry Huxley, and Thomas Vernon Wollaston. Lyell subsequently heard that they "ran a tilt against species farther I believe than they are deliberately prepared to go. ... I cannot easily see how they can go so far, and not embrace the whole Lamarckian doctrine."[18][19][20]

On 1 May Lyell wrote to urge Darwin to establish priority: "I wish you would publish some small fragment of your data pigeons if you please & so out with the theory & let it take date—& be cited—& understood."[18] Darwin replied on 3 May: "With respect to your suggestion of a sketch of my view; I hardly know what to think, but will reflect on it; but it goes against my prejudices. To give a fair sketch would be absolutely impossible, for every proposition requires such an array of facts. If I were to do anything it could only refer to the main agency of change, selection,—& perhaps point out a very few of the leading features which countenance such a view, & some few of the main difficulties. But I do not know what to think: I rather hate the idea of writing for priority, yet I certainly sh^d be vexed if any one were to publish my doctrines before me."[21]

On Thursday 8 May, while in London for meetings, Darwin visited Lyell.[21] In a letter to Hooker the next day, Darwin said he "had good talk with Lyell about my species work, & he urges me strongly to publish something. I am fixed against any periodical or Journal, as I positively will not expose myself to an Editor or Council allowing a publication for which they might be abused". If he published, it could only be "a very thin & little volume, giving a sketch of my views & difficulties; but it is really dreadfully unphilosophical to give a resumé, without exact references, of an unpublished work". Lyell appeared to think it could be done "at the suggestion of friends" as Darwin had "been at work for 18 years, & yet could not publish for several years".[22] Hooker's response encouraging publication was welcomed by Darwin, who thought his suggestion "that the Essay might supersede & take away all novelty & value from my future larger Book, is very true; & that would grieve me beyond everything. On the other hand, (again from Lyell’s urgent advice) I published a preliminary sketch of Coral Theory & this did neither good nor harm.— I begin most heartily to wish that Lyell had never put this idea of an Essay into my head." On 14 May 1856 Darwin noted in his journal that he had begun his "species sketch".[23]

By July, Darwin had decided to produce Natural Selection as a full technical treatise on species. Lyell seemed to be coming round to Darwin's ideas, but in private was agonising over the social implications if humans had animal ancestry, particularly now that race was becoming an issue, with Robert Knox describing races as different species and warning of racial wars. Hooker's verdict on the growing manuscript was "incomparably more favourable" than Darwin had anticipated, while Darwin tried to put over the point that "external conditions do extremely little", it was the selection of "chance" variations that produced new species.

Darwin's experiments on how species spread were now extended to considering how animals such as snails could be carried on birds' feet, and seeds in birds' droppings. His tenth child, Charles Waring Darwin was born on 6 December apparently without his full share of intelligence, renewing fears of inbreeding and hereditary defects, a topic that he covered in principle in his book.

Darwin's cousin William Darwin Fox continued to give hims strong support, warning him against overworking on his huge book and recommending a holiday, but Darwin was immersed in his experiments and his writing.[24] "I am got most deeply interested in my subject; though I wish I could set less value on the bauble fame, either present or posthumous, than I do, but not, I think, to any extreme degree; yet, if I know myself, I would work just as hard, though with less gusto, if I knew that my Book w^d be published for ever anonymously".[25]

On 23 February 1857 the Darwins were visited for lunch by Robert FitzRoy, who had been the captain of HMS Beagle during Darwin's voyage, together with his second wife, his first wife and his only daughter having died.[24]

Darwin's attention turned from pigeons to seedlings, experimenting with subjecting plants to conditions which might produce variation. His family helped with this and with tracking bees, experimenting (unsuccessfully) to try to find out what would influence their flight path.

His wife Emma Darwin was now known throughout the parish for helping in the way a parson's wife might be expected to, and as well as providing nursing care for her own family's frequent illnesses, she gave out bread tokens to the hungry and "small pensions for the old, dainties for the ailing, and medical comforts and simple medicine" based on Robert Darwin's old prescription book. Charles Darwin also took on local duties, increasing his social standing by becoming a Justice of the Peace and a magistrate. To accommodate the needs of his large family and accommodate visiting cousins further house extensions got under way. In November 1857 he escaped the worries for a week's recuperation at Lane's Moor Park spa.

During his research in 1856, Darwin noted his intention to publish his views on human racial ancestry: by early September of that year while drafting his book on Natural Selection he began collecting notes for Chapter 6 on the topic of sexual selection. This would cover humans as well as birds and fishes. By 31 March 1857 he had drafted five chapters with the sixth under way, and he wrote out a table of contents. In the following months he completed ten pages of Chapter 6, some 2,500 words, and pencilled in the heading "Theory applied to Races of Man". At this stage he regarded sexual selection as due to a "struggle for supremacy" between males, and did not yet think of female choice as significant. He then apparently dropped the whole topic for some reason, possibly Charles Lyell's caution: the brief abstract Darwin sent to Asa Gray on 5 September made no mention of sexual selection or human evolution.[38]

Wallace, responding to Darwin's 1 May letter,[29] discussed his own theorising. Darwin replied on 22 December that he was "extremely glad to hear that you are attending to distribution in accordance with theoretical ideas. I am a firm believer, that without speculation there is no good & original observation", and added that "I believe I go much further than you; but it is too long a subject to enter on my speculative notions." He also said "You ask whether I shall discuss 'man';—I think I shall avoid whole subject, as so surrounded with prejudices, though I fully admit that it is the highest & most interesting problem for the naturalist."[17]

Huxley used his March 1858 Royal Institution lecture to claim that structurally gorillas are as close to humans as they are to baboons. He added "Nay more I believe that the mental & moral faculties are essentially & fundamentally the same kind in animals & ourselves". This was a clear challenge to Owen's lecture claiming human uniqueness, given at the same venue. In a subsequent lecture Huxley stated that if there was a solution to the problem of species, it "must come from the side of indefinite modifiability", an indication that he was moving towards Darwin's position. In June he used his lecture at the Royal Society to attack Owen's "etherial archetype". Having gained a foothold in science with the aid of the Westminster Review group led by John Chapman and Herbert Spencer, Huxley was out to dislodge the domination of science by wealthy clergymen– led by Owen– instead wanting to create a professional salaried scientific civil service. To Spencer, animal species had developed by "adaptions upon adaptions". Huxley was using arguments on origins to split science from theology, arguing that "it is as respectable to be modified monkey as modified dirt".

Lyell and Hooker agreed on a joint paper to be presented at the Linnean Society – Lyell, Hooker and Darwin were all fellows of the society and council members, and Hooker had been closely involved in reviving the fortunes of the society and running its journal. Other venues were either inappropriate, or in the case of the Zoological Society of London, potentially hostile under the leadership of Richard Owen. It was now time for the summer break but, as they knew, its meeting had been postponed due to the death of former president Robert Brown on 10 June 1858, and the council had arranged an extra meeting on 1 July.[45]

At the last minute, late in the evening of 30 June, Lyell and Hooker forwarded the Wallace and Darwin papers to the Secretary John Joseph Bennett, to be read at the meeting the next day. Mrs. Hooker had spent the afternoon copying out extracts from the handwritten documents Darwin had sent with his letter of the previous night, presumably chosen by Hooker to suit the verbal presentation, and Lyell and Hooker wrote a short introductory letter.[46] The papers entitled respectively On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection, incorporated Wallace's pages; and extracts from Darwin's 1844 Essay and his 1857 letter to Gray. At the meeting the Secretary read the papers out, before going on to six other papers, and there was no discussion of them at the end of the meeting, perhaps because of the amount of business that had been dealt with including an obituary notice for Robert Brown given by Lyell, or possibly due to reluctance to speak out against a theory supported by the eminent Lyell and Hooker. Thomas Bell, who had written up the description of Darwin's reptile specimens from the Beagle expedition, presided over the meeting. He apparently disapproved, and in his annual presidential report presented in May 1859 wrote that "The year which has passed has not, indeed, been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionize, so to speak, the department of science on which they bear".[2][47] However, the Vice-President promptly removed all references to immutability from his own paper which was awaiting publication.[48]

As might be expected, the joint paper alerted those subscribers who met the argument for the first time in print, and whose minds were prepared by prior struggles with the species question. Alfred Newton, who held the chair in Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge from 1866 to 1907, wrote this: "I sat up late that night to read it [the Linnean Society paper]; and never shall I forget the impression it made upon me. Herein was contained a perfectly simple solution of all the difficulties which had been troubling me for months past. I hardly know whether I at first felt more vexed at the solution not having occurred to me than pleased that it had been found at all" (he was not alone in that thought!—see T.H. Huxley). Newton remained a Darwinian for the rest of his life. (Wollaston 1921 p112; see also Newton 1888)

While the meeting took place, Darwin was attending his son's funeral. His family moved to his sister-in-law's in Sussex to escape the fever, which eventually killed six children in the village of Downe. It had been a frightening and miserable fortnight, but he was "more than satisfied" with the outcome of the meeting. He then took his children to the seaside at the Isle of Wight and pushed ahead with an "abstract" of Natural Selection which again began growing to book size. He returned to the Moor Park spa with stomach ailments.

Wallace's reaction, delivered in January 1859, was that he was gratified to have spurred Darwin into making the announcement and that it would have caused him "much pain & regret" if his papers had been published on their own, without Darwin's papers. Darwin was still sensitive on the point, and assured Wallace that he "had absolutely nothing whatever to do with leading Lyell and Hooker to what they thought was a fair course of action". He responded to Wallace's enquiry about what Lyell thought of the theory by saying that "I think he is somewhat staggered, but does not give in and speaks with horror [of] what a job it would be for the next edition of "The Principles" [of Geology] if he were "perverted". But he is most candid and honest, and I think he will end up by being "perverted"." Lyell was still struggling to come to terms with the idea of mankind, with immortal soul, originating from animals, but "Considering his age, his former views and position in society, I think his conduct has been heroic on the subject."

Darwin was now working hard on an "abstract" trimmed from his Natural Selection, writing much of it from memory. The chapters were sent to Hooker for correcting as they were completed, which led to a minor disaster when a large bundle was put by accident into the drawer Hooker's wife used to keep paper for the children to draw on. Lyell made arrangements with the publisher John Murray, who had brought out the second edition of The Voyage of the Beagle. Darwin fretted, asking "Does he know all the subject of the book?", and saying that to avoid being more "un-orthodox than the subject makes inevitable" he did not discuss the origin of man, or bring in any discussion about Genesis. Unusually, Murray agreed to publish the manuscript sight unseen, and to pay Darwin two-thirds of the net proceeds. He anticipated printing 500 copies.

Title page of the first edition of On the Origin of Species

Darwin had decided to call his book An Abstract of an Essay on the Origin of Species and Varieties through Natural Selection, but with Murray's persuasion it was eventually reduced to the snappier On the Origin of Species through Natural Selection. The full title reads On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, with races referring to varieties of domestic and wild organisms and not to human groups.

By the end of May, Darwin's health had failed again, but after a week's hydrotherapy he was able to start correcting the proofs. He struggled on despite rarely being able to write free of stomach pains for more than twenty minutes at a stretch, and made drastic revisions which left Murray with a huge £72 bill for corrections. Murray upped the print run to 1,250 copies, with a publication date in November. A copy was sent to Lyell, with a "foolishly anxious" Darwin hoping that he would "come round". An eager Lyell gave Darwin "very great kudos", though he was still concerned that "the dignity of man is at stake". One of Lyell's relatives commented that it was "sure to be very curious and important... however mortifying it may be to think that our remote ancestors were jelly fishes". Darwin was "sorry to say that I have no 'consolatory view' on the dignity of man. I am content that man will probably advance, and care not much whether we are looked at as mere savages in a remotely distant future."

On 1 October Darwin finished the proofs, suffering from fits of vomiting. He then went off for a two-month stay at Wells House, a hydropathic establishment in the town of Ilkley. He was joined by his family for a time of "frozen misery" in the unusually early winter. Darwin wrote "I have been very bad lately, having had an awful 'crisis' one leg swelled like elephantiasis – eyes almost closed up – covered with a rash & fiery Boils; but they tell me it will surely do me much good – it was like living in Hell." On 2 November he was pleased to receive from Murray a specimen copy bound in royal green cloth, priced at fifteen shillings.

Presentation copies were sent out by Murray, and on 11 and 12 November, still at the spa, Darwin wrote notes to go with these complimentary copies. He disarmingly anticipated their reactions: to Asa Gray "there are very many serious difficulties", to the Revd. John Stevens Henslow "I fear you will not approve of your pupil", to Louis Agassiz "[not sent in] a spirit of defiance or bravado" and to Richard Owen "it will seem 'an abomination'.", amongst others. For Wallace's copy he wrote "God knows what the public will think".

Note that this article is largely based on Desmond and Moore's book, with commentary summarised in other words and quotations (or extracts from quotations) repeated verbatim.

• The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online – Darwin Online; Darwin's publications, private papers and bibliography, supplementary works including biographies, obituaries and reviews. Free to use, includes items not in public domain.
• Works by Charles Darwin at Project Gutenberg; public domain
• Darwin Correspondence Project Text and notes for most of his letters