IN THE LATE summer or early autumn of 1859, Whitwell Elwin, editor of the respectedBritish journal the Quarterly Review, was sent an advance copy of a new book by thenaturalist Charles Darwin. Elwin read the book with interest and agreed that it had merit, butfeared that the subject matter was too narrow to attract a wide audience. He urged Darwin towrite a book about pigeons instead. “Everyone is interested in pigeons,” he observedhelpfully.

Elwin’s sage advice was ignored, and On the Origin of Species by Means of NaturalSelection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life was published in lateNovember 1859, priced at fifteen shillings. The first edition of 1,250 copies sold out on thefirst day. It has never been out of print, and scarcely out of controversy, in all the time since—not bad going for a man whose principal other interest was earthworms and who, but for asingle impetuous decision to sail around the world, would very probably have passed his lifeas an anonymous country parson known for, well, for an interest in earthworms.

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