The Origin of Species. DARWIN (Charles).

The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

Sixth edition (Forty-Ninth Thousand). 8vo. [196 x 135 x 34 mm]. [1]f, xxi, 432 pp, plus folding map pp. 84. Bound in publisher's original dark green cloth, the boards blocked in blind, the spine lettered in gilt, patterned endpapers. (Extremities lightly bumped, minor marks to the boards, front joint a little frail but still holding and square).

London: John Murray, 1897

Small tear to the front flyleaf, light foxing to the endpapers otherwise internally very clean. A neat contemporary inscription to the front paste down dated 1897. Overall a very good copy indeed.

The sixth edition was first issued in 1872 and reads "eleventh thousand" on the title page, it was the last lifetime edition and the first edition to use the term "evolution". It also included a glossary and a new chapter refuting the arguments of St George Mivart, a Roman Catholic biologist who became one of the fiercest critics of natural selection. "This edition was aimed at a wider public and printed in smaller type... giving the general impression of a cheap edition" (Freeman).

Stock no. ebc9068