The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex (1885)

London : John Murray, 1885. Second edition, revised and augmented. Nineteenth thousand. Octavo, gilt-lettered green cloth (edges slightly rubbed), light foxing to endpapers, pp. xvi; 693; blank, 32 (advertisements, dated January, 1885), 78 text illustrations, a very good copy.

The second edition, eighth issue, 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 959.