Voyage of the Beagle - Charles Darwin
Mar 16th, 2007 by Bauman
“The experiences of his five years in the Beagle, how he dealt with them, and what they led to, built up into a process of epoch-making importance in the history of thought.”
The son of a well-to-do country doctor, Darwin finished at Cambridge with an unexceptional record, anticipating only a comfortable position in the clergy. He pursued his interests in geology and natural history essentially as the hobby of an educated parson with plenty of leisure time.
In 1831, shortly after graduating, a letter arrived offering the 23-year-old Darwin an unpaid position as the naturalist on board the HMS Beagle. The proposition came as a complete surprise, and his father initially convinced him to decline. He thought better of his decision, however, and hurried to London to interview with the equally young and decidedly aristocratic Captain Robert Fitzroy, who had taken over command of the Beagle on its previous voyage to South America.
Though they came from substantially different backgrounds, the two formed an immediate friendship, sharing a small cabin during the Beagle’s five-year circumnavigation, from 1831-36. It was on this trip that Darwin first read Lyell’s Principles of Geology, on this trip that he observed the strange flora and fauna of the Galapagos Islands, on this trip that he began to form the ideas that would go on to become On The Origin of Species.
In 1839 the four-volume report of the Beagle’s two expeditions appeared; Volume III of the report consisted of the detailed journal Darwin kept during the voyage - the great scientist’s first book. We are pleased to offer an excellent set of the four-volume report, in original cloth and complete with the eight folding maps.