Autobiographies (Penguin Classics)
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Product Description
Product Description
The Autobiographies of Charles Darwin (1809-82) provide a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of the world's intellectual giants. They begin with engaging memories of his childhood and youth and of his burgeoning scientific curiosity and love of the natural world, which led to him joining the expedition on the Beagle. Darwin follows this with survey of his career and ends with a reckoning of his life's work. Interspersed with these recollections are fascinating portraits - from his devoted wife Emma and his talented father, both bullying and kind, to the leading figures of the Victorian scientific world he counted among his friends, including Lyell and Huxley. Honest and illuminating, these memoirs reveal a man who was isolated by his controversial beliefs and whose towering achievements were attained by a life-long passion for the discoveries of science.
About the Author
Charles Darwin (1809-82) was an evolutionary scientist, best-known for his controversial and ground-breaking 'Origin of Species' (1859).
Michael Neve is based at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. He teaches and researches the history of psychiatry and the history of the life sciences. With Janet Browne, he co-edited Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle for Penguin Classics. Sharon Messenger is a research officer at the Wellcome Trust Centre.
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First Sentence
My earliest recollection, the date of which I can approximately tell, and which must have been before I four years old, was when sitting on Carolines knee in the dining room, whilst she was cutting an orange for me, a cow run by the window, which made me jump; so that I received a bad cut of which I bear the scar to this day. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
My earliest recollection, the date of which I can approximately tell, and which must have been before I four years old, was when sitting on Carolines knee in the dining room, whilst she was cutting an orange for me, a cow run by the window, which made me jump; so that I received a bad cut of which I bear the scar to this day. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
We will all be spending 2009 hearing from hundreds of different experts on Darwin but why not give the man himself a chance to speak? In just 89 pages you get a wonderful plunge through his entire life, in a very personal autobiographical document he wrote for his immediate family and descendants.
His memory of the guilt he felt after once hitting a puppy as a child; his dad telling him he'd never amount to anything; his time spent at Cambridge practising how he looked shooting a gun in the mirror; his memory of watching two bodysnatchers caught by a mob in the street; a whole chapter on his thoughts about religion, the keenest difference between him and his wife; his vivid character sketches of his supporters and enemies; the description of how he remembered having come to his novel theory of evolution; and his opinion of the surprising advantages of spending a lot of time ill. Really vivid, and well worth having if you are a Darwin fan.
His memory of the guilt he felt after once hitting a puppy as a child; his dad telling him he'd never amount to anything; his time spent at Cambridge practising how he looked shooting a gun in the mirror; his memory of watching two bodysnatchers caught by a mob in the street; a whole chapter on his thoughts about religion, the keenest difference between him and his wife; his vivid character sketches of his supporters and enemies; the description of how he remembered having come to his novel theory of evolution; and his opinion of the surprising advantages of spending a lot of time ill. Really vivid, and well worth having if you are a Darwin fan.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
If, like me, you've read some of Darwin's major works (the Voyage of The Beagle and The Origin so far, in my case), or enjoyed Attenborough's Charles Darwin And The Tree of Life [DVD], you may well, as I did, want to know more about Darwin the man. This little gem of a book, written not for public consumption, but for his children, is a perfect starting point.
Without going into the detail, and spoiling your fun, suffice it to say that the man that emerges from these pages is all that one might hope for and expect. Viewing himself with charming but neither false nor exaggerated modesty, he describes his life's work, centred around his awakening and the pivotal point of his professional career, the Beagle voyage, and his subsequent labours, culminating in The Origin, not as the result of a clichéd eureka moment, but rather as summed up in the phrase "it's dogged as does it".
Rather like David Attenborough, who's done so much to disseminate and popularise an understanding of Darwin's ideas, Darwin emerges as a slightly old-fashioned gent, a model of politeness and good manners, keen to maintain privacy where his home life is concerned, but alert and receptive to the latest in science and intellectual ideas, happy to enjoy a position of eminence and status, but with a strong and irrepressible desire for truth and honesty. Also, like Attenborough, Darwin is possessed of a gentle dry wit, and a charmingly engaging boyish enthusiasm for his passions.
There's a good essay introducing this edition, which discusses many aspects of the content of the book, not least the need to be cautious in appraising someone as reported in their own words. The balance of self-indulgence and self-awareness seems to my mind about right (I'm saving the Desmond/Moore biography, Darwin, a dauntingly weighty tome which promises to be a more thorough and academic overview, for another time!), and in some respects, for a man of Darwin's acumen, that shouldn't be so surprising.
If, like me, you already love Darwin, you'll find more to admire here. If you think he's the devil incarnate, well, perhaps have a read of this anyway, and see what you think by the end of it.
Without going into the detail, and spoiling your fun, suffice it to say that the man that emerges from these pages is all that one might hope for and expect. Viewing himself with charming but neither false nor exaggerated modesty, he describes his life's work, centred around his awakening and the pivotal point of his professional career, the Beagle voyage, and his subsequent labours, culminating in The Origin, not as the result of a clichéd eureka moment, but rather as summed up in the phrase "it's dogged as does it".
Rather like David Attenborough, who's done so much to disseminate and popularise an understanding of Darwin's ideas, Darwin emerges as a slightly old-fashioned gent, a model of politeness and good manners, keen to maintain privacy where his home life is concerned, but alert and receptive to the latest in science and intellectual ideas, happy to enjoy a position of eminence and status, but with a strong and irrepressible desire for truth and honesty. Also, like Attenborough, Darwin is possessed of a gentle dry wit, and a charmingly engaging boyish enthusiasm for his passions.
There's a good essay introducing this edition, which discusses many aspects of the content of the book, not least the need to be cautious in appraising someone as reported in their own words. The balance of self-indulgence and self-awareness seems to my mind about right (I'm saving the Desmond/Moore biography, Darwin, a dauntingly weighty tome which promises to be a more thorough and academic overview, for another time!), and in some respects, for a man of Darwin's acumen, that shouldn't be so surprising.
If, like me, you already love Darwin, you'll find more to admire here. If you think he's the devil incarnate, well, perhaps have a read of this anyway, and see what you think by the end of it.
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I intended to order Anthony Trollope's 'Autobiography' and to my horror I received the Autobiog of Charles Darwin - I couldn't make out how I could make such a mistake - which I did - and then after thinking over what I did on the day I ordered, I realised that the mistake was because I was searching for the Anthony Trollope in a Penguin Classic version to match all my other Anthony Trollope's - and I ended up clicking on the Charles Darwin in Penguin Classic - because I didn't do a second check - an easy mistake to make and costly and one to watch out for.
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