This Study Guide was prepared from the Second Edition of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859), with references to the significant changes made to later editions. Gillian Beer writes in the introduction to the 1998 Oxford World's Classics text that the Second Edition "represents Darwin's immediate urgent response to the private and public reception of the Origin. Six editions were issued between 1859 and 1872 and these editions introduced considerable revisions, amplifications, corrections and new material." The last four editions "move the text increasingly far away from many of Darwin's initial arguments in an attempt to assimilate the responses and critiques of his contemporaries."
The Origin of Species
By Charles Darwin
- Table of contents
- Note on Editions
- Biography
- Themes
- Ussher-ing in Evolution
- Confessing the Murder
- Variation and Struggle
- Natural Selection and "The Survival of the Fittest"
- Sex Please, We're Birdish
- The Spectre of Lamarck
- The Tree of Life and Death
- Objecting to the Evidence
- Bulldogs and Gods
- Missing Links - A (Very) Brief Sketch of Evolution since Darwin
- Sample Questions
- Further Reading