The Voyage of the Beagle

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title The Voyage of the Beagle
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Charles Darwin
Edited by Janet Browne
Edited by Michael Neve
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:448
Dimensions(mm): Height 198,Width 129
Category/GenrePets and the Natural World
Classic travel writing
ISBN/Barcode 9780140432688
ClassificationsDewey:508.092
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint Penguin Classics
Publication Date 29 June 1989
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Penguin Classics relaunch. When HMS Beagle sailed out of Devonport on 27 December 1831, Charles Darwin was twenty-two and setting off on the voyage of a lifetime. His journal, here reprinted in a shortened form, shows a naturalist making patient observations concerning geology, natural history, people, places and events. Volcanoes in the Galapagos, the Gossamer spider of Patagonia and the Australasian coral reefs - all are to be found in these extraordinary writings. The insights made here were to set in motion the intellectual currents that led to the most controversial book of the Victorian age- The Origin of Species.

Author Biography

Charles Darwin, a Victorian scientist and naturalist, has become one of the most famous figures of science to date. Born in 1809 to an upper-middle-class medical family, he was destined for a career in either medicine or the Anglican Church. However, he never completed his medical education and his future changed entirely in 1831 when he joined HMS Beagle as a self-financing, independent naturalist. On returning to England in 1836 he began to write up his theories and observations which culminated in a series of books, most famously On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, where he challenged and contradicted contemporary biological and religious beliefs with two decades worth of scientific investigation and theory. Darwin's theory of natural selection is now the most widely accepted scientific model of how species evolve. He died in 1882 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.