Product Description

The Autobiographies of Charles Darwin (1809-82) provide a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of the world’s intellectual giants. They begin with engaging memories of his childhood and youth and of his burgeoning scientific curiosity and love of the natural world, which led to him joining the expedition on the Beagle. Darwin follows this with survey of his career and ends with a reckoning of his life’s work. Interspersed with these recollections are fascinating portraits - from his devoted wife Emma and his talented father, both bullying and kind, to the leading figures of the Victorian scientific world he counted among his friends, including Lyell and Huxley. Honest and illuminating, these memoirs reveal a man who was isolated by his controversial beliefs and whose towering achievements were attained by a life-long passion for the discoveries of science.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28520 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

About the Author
Charles Darwin (1809-82) was an evolutionary scientist, best-known for his controversial and ground-breaking 'Origin of Species' (1859). Michael Neve is based at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. He teaches and researches the history of psychiatry and the history of the life sciences. With Janet Browne, he co-edited Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle for Penguin Classics. Sharon Messenger is a research officer at the Wellcome Trust Centre.

Customer Reviews

Hear from the man himself
We will all be spending 2009 hearing from hundreds of different experts on Darwin but why not give the man himself a chance to speak? In just 89 pages you get a wonderful plunge through his entire life, in a very personal autobiographical document he wrote for his immediate family and descendants.

His memory of the guilt he felt after once hitting a puppy as a child; his dad telling him he'd never amount to anything; his time spent at Cambridge practising how he looked shooting a gun in the mirror; his memory of watching two bodysnatchers caught by a mob in the street; a whole chapter on his thoughts about religion, the keenest difference between him and his wife; his vivid character sketches of his supporters and enemies; the description of how he remembered having come to his novel theory of evolution; and his opinion of the surprising advantages of spending a lot of time ill. Really vivid, and well worth having if you are a Darwin fan.