[DARWIN, CHARLES]. The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. London: John Murray, 1868.
Hardcover. First edition, first impression (denoted by one-line imprints on foot of spines; 5 lines of errata in volume I and 7 lines of errata in volume II; terminal publisher's catalogues - vol. I with 32p. advertisements for John Murray's books dated April 1867; vol. II with 2p. advertisements dated February 1868). In two volumes, complete. Octavo (8°) (214 x 132 mm), pp. [3], [iv-viii], 411, (32); [3], [iv-viii], 486, (2). Publisher's original green cloth, gilt titles and decoration to spines, blind-panelled covers, bottom edges trimmed, other edges untrimmed, coated endpapers. Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Limited, Stamford Street and Charing Cross. 43 wood-engraved illustrations in the text. Index to rear in double columns. Partially removed binders sticker to rear pastedown of vol. I.
Condition: NEAR FINE. Collate complete, some leaves remain uncut, the bindings secure and square, minor bumping to spine ends and points, covers and contents remarkably clean, faintest touch of foxing to endpapers, coated endpapers with some marking, without inking or bookplates. Scarce thus.
Notes: First edition, first issue, with the relevant issue points as called for by Freeman. The first issue, consisting of 1,500 copies, was published in January 1868 and was followed by a second the next month. This work "intended to provide overwhelming evidence for the ubiquity of variation" and refuted the idea "that variations had not occurred purely by chance but were providentially directed" (ODNB). It also included the first appearance of the phrase "survival of the fittest". Work on the book began two days after the second edition of the Origin appeared on 7 January 1860. Along with the ascertainable facts of artificial selection, it contained Darwin's hypothesis of pangenesis. Francis Darwin recorded that 'about half of the eight years that elapsed between its commencement and completion were spent on it. The book did not escape adverse criticism: it was said, for instance, that the public had been patiently waiting for Mr. Darwin's pièces justicatives, and that after eight years of expectation all they got was a mass of detail about pigeons, rabbits and silk worms. But the true critics welcomed it as an expansion with unrivalled wealth of illustration of a section of the Origin' (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters, ed. F. Darwin, New York, 1958, p. 281). The book's slow progress towards publication was due not only to its size but the author's ill health. Visits to relations who included Caroline and Jos for a few days in May of 1863 failed to cure the vomiting and other symptoms which continued until 1865. To complete his research Charles relied on a wide circle of correspondents, and also any amateur help he could get. After one visit to Downe, his three nieces, Sophy, Lucy, and Margaret Wedgwood, Caroline's daughters, managed to collect 256 'specimens of Lythrum' in meadows around Llandudno as he had instructed.
References: [Freeman 877; Garrison-Morton 224.1; Norman 597].
