The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex (1882, Sir Charles James Martin’s copy)

London : John Murray, 1882. Second edition, revised and augmented. Fifteenth thousand. Octavo, gilt-lettered green cloth (edges slightly rubbed, upper hinge tender), pale foxing to endpapers, slight marginal stain to lower portion of text block, pp. xvi; 693; blank, 78 text illustrations, ownership inscription of C. J. Martin 1883 to preliminary blank, annotated below ‘fr. H. J. R.’, a good copy.

The second edition of Darwin’s important work on natural selection.

As Freeman notes: the word ‘evolution’ occurs, for the first time in any of Darwin’s works, on Page 2 of the first volume of the first edition, before its appearance in the sixth edition of the ‘Origin’ in the following year. This edition includes the Supplemental Note on Sexual Selection in Relation to Monkeys (Reprinted from Nature, November 2, 1876, p. 18). This first appeared in the 12th Thousand of 1877.

Freeman 955.

Provenance :

Sir Charles James Martin CMG FRS FRCS (9 January 1866 – 15 February 1955), eminent British/Australian scientist who lectured at Australian universities for twelve years. ‘During World War I he served with the Australian Army Medical Corps in Gallipoli, Egypt, and France as a pathologist with the rank of Lieutenant-colonel. He found some cases of enteric fever at Gallipoli were not typhoid, but paratyphoids A and B, and made a vaccine for all three. A memo to his colleagues on the different treatments for amoebic and bacillary dysentery was widely circulated by the army under Martin’s name … His contributions to the foundation of biological science in Australia were commemorated by the National Health and Medical Research Council, which created the Sir Charles James Martin Overseas Biomedical Fellowships in 1951’ – Wikipedia

Loosely enclosed, on the back of a letter to Martin from Australia House, London, is a manuscript note signed by Martin and dated Cambridge, 1946, indicating this copy of Darwin’s Descent of Man is ‘probably the first scientific book I purchased. H. J. R. was my brother’.