Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters
1892
Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters
1892
Here is the most intimate portrait we have of the man who remade our understanding of life on Earth. Darwin wrote this autobiographical chapter in the final years of his life, looking back with remarkable honesty on his childhood in Shrewsbury, his feckless years as a medical student, the transformative voyage of the Beagle, and the slow, agonizing decades of thought that produced The Origin of Species. Francis Darwin enriched this with letters that reveal a man far more complex than the Victorian monument: prone to doubt, devoted to his children, haunted by illness, and capable of sharp humor. We see the naturalist at his desk, the father watching his sons play, the correspondent arguing with allies and critics. What emerges is not the statue in the square but the human being who dared to ask whether we, too, were part of nature's brutal machinery. For anyone who has read The Origin and wondered about the mind behind it, this is the answer.
