THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle For Life

New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1860. First Edition, First Printing in America, First Issue with two quotations facing the title-page. A copy with fine provenance, the Lee - Perkins - Shattuck - Peabody Family Copy. With folding diagram as called for. 8vo, publisher’s original brown cloth with central ornamental designs and border rules blocked in blind on both covers, the spine lettered in gilt. 432 pp. including index. A completely unrestored copy, internally fresh clean, the hinges strong and tight, the text-block in fine condition, covers unusually clean and well preserved, the fragile cloth of the spine panel with some chipping to the head and foot, the gilt mellowed. FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE OF THE AMERICAN PRINTING. RARE IN ORIGINAL CLOTH AND ONE OF THE GREATEST BOOKS IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE.
The copy is unrestored and unsophisticated, the hinges still in unusually nice condition as is the cloth of the covers..
Darwin's Revolutionary Masterwork, in which he not only "drew an entirely new picture of the workings of organic nature; he revolutionized our methods of thinking and our outlook on the natural order of things. The recognition that constant change is the order of the universe had been finally established and a vast step forward in the uniformity of nature had been taken." [PMM) Together with Copernicus' DE REVOLUTIONIBUS and Newton's PRINCIPIA, it is deemed one of the three greatest and most important scientific works ever penned.
"The most influential scientific work of the nineteenth century" and "The most important biological work ever written" (Horblit, Freeman). Darwin's elaboration of the theory of natural selection laid the groundwork for the controversy over the evolution of man, and with only slight modification by such scientists as Stephen Jay Gould, Darwin's ideas remain the umbra under which most current biological research is conducted.
Darwin had intended the book to be an abstract of his 'big book' on transmutation, of which only the first part (Variation Under Domestication, 1868) was published in his lifetime.
The book comes from the Lee- Perkins - Shattuck - Peabody collection, a family line that is famous throughout New England.