8vo. Original pink printed wrappers [Freeman first form], entirely unopened (very light edge soiling or toning to wrappers, else fine).

FIRST EDITION OF DARWIN AND WALLACE’S JOINT ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION.

After delaying publication of his theory for many years, Darwin was startled in June 1858 to receive from Alfred Russel Wallace, then in the Malay Archipelago, an essay outlining a theory strikingly similar to his own. Darwin immediately wrote to Charles Lyell: “I never saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842, he could not have made a better short abstract!... So all my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed” (18 June 1858).

Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker arranged for both naturalists' work to be presented simultaneously before the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858. Neither Darwin nor Wallace attended the historic meeting: Wallace remained in the Malay Archipelago, while Darwin was mourning the death of his infant son, Charles Waring, only three days earlier.

Published the following month, the joint communication brought the theory of natural selection before the scientific community for the first time. In their introductory letter, Lyell and Hooker explained that Darwin and Wallace had “independently and unknown to one another, conceived the same very ingenious theory” and concluded that “both may fairly claim the merit of being original thinkers in this important line of inquiry.” The communication comprises an extract from Darwin’s unpublished manuscript on species, written in 1844; an abstract of his 1857 letter to the American botanist Asa Gray; and Wallace’s essay, “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type.” Their arrangement placed Darwin’s earlier writings before Wallace’s paper, establishing the chronology of Darwin’s independent development of the theory. The joint announcement prompted Darwin to publish a fuller account of natural selection; the “abstract” he began shortly thereafter became On the Origin of Species, published the following year.

Despite its subsequent importance, the announcement initially attracted remarkably little attention. In his presidential address of May 1859, Thomas Bell still observed that the preceding year had produced no discovery that had immediately revolutionized its field. The significance of the 1858 communication became fully apparent following the publication of the Origin in November 1859.

Freeman records five forms of the original edition, all printed from the same type setting. The present copy is Freeman 347, the Zoology part issued separately in the Linnean Society’s original pink wrappers. Copies were also issued with the Botany papers in blue wrappers (Freeman 346), while both configurations were subsequently incorporated into the annual volume from reserved sheets (Freeman 350 and 351). A separate author’s offprint (Freeman 348) is distinguished by the addition “From the Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society for August 1858” on p. 45.

Freeman 347; PMM 344a; Grolier 23a (offprint issue); Norman 591 (offprint issue). AN EXCEPTIONALLY FINE COPY IN THE ORIGINAL PINK WRAPPERS, WITH THE LEAVES UNOPENED. According to online records, only three other copies in the original pink wrappers have appeared at auction in the past twenty years.