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Janet Browne

Charles Darwin: A Biography, Vol. 2 - The Power of Place Paperback – October 5, 2003

by Janet Browne (Author)

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In 1858, Charles Darwin was forty-nine years old, a gentleman scientist living quietly at Down House in the Kent countryside. He was not yet a focus of debate; his "big book on species" still lay on his desk as a manuscript. For more than twenty years he had been accumulating material for it, puzzling over the questions that it raised, trying to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion, and wanting to be certain that his startling theory of evolution was correct.

It is at this point that the concluding volume of Janet Browne's magisterial biography opens. Beginning with the extraordinary events that finally forced the Origin of Species into print, we come to the years of fame and controversy. Here, Browne does dramatic justice to all aspects of the Darwinian revolution, from a fascinating examination of the Victorian publishing scene to a survey of the debates between scientists and churchmen over evolutionary theory. At the same time, she presents a wonderfully sympathetic and authoritative picture of Darwin himself.

Print length

624 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Princeton University Press
Publication date

October 5, 2003
Dimensions

6.14 x 1.38 x 9.21 inches
ISBN-10

0691114390
ISBN-13

978-0691114392
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Winner of the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography"

"Winner of the 2004 Pfizer Prize, History of Science Society"

"This biography is matchless in detail and compass, and one feels an abiding gratitude that Browne was willing to sacrifice so many years of her life to reconstruct Darwin's."---John Tooby, New York Times

"A masterpiece. . . . Brown took on an enormously ambitious project, and only an astonishingly skillful writer and a masterly historian could have pulled it off. She has."---Benjamin Schwarz, Atlantic Monthly

"[A] sprawling, magnificent biography. Integrating the best of current scholarship with her own discoveries, Browne's account is state of the art."---Richard Milner, Scientific American

"Superb. . . . An intimate yet clinical study."---Keith Stuart Thomas, American Scientist

"Soothing, unhurried, and absorbing. . . . Browne has succeeded triumphantly in the biographer's most important task: she has made [Darwin] human."---Jane Ridley, Spectator

About the Author

Janet Browne is Professor in the History of Biology at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London and is currently President of the British Society for the History of Science. She is the author of several books, including Charles Darwin: Voyaging (Princeton), and has served as Associate Editor of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; First Edition Thus (October 5, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 624 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0691114390
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691114392
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.89 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.14 x 1.38 x 9.21 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #532,868 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #746 in Environmentalist & Naturalist Biographies
- #1,437 in Scientist Biographies

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52 ratings

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Joel Marks

Homegrown science

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2020

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I won't repeat my praise for Volume 1, which applies equally to Volume 2. Just to add about this one that it was fascinating for me as an academic to learn how similar yet different scholarship, publishing, professional correspondence, and so forth were/are then and now. I also feel a sense of "nostalgia" for a time when it was perfectly respectable, and obviously highly productive, for scientists to conduct their work in the privacy of their home (albeit, in cases such as Darwin's, after extraordinary voyages abroad) and as amateurs in the purest sense of the word. Of course it helped to be independently wealthy. But Darwin took this paradigm to its limit, to science's benefit. And even as the world, and science, were changing, he managed to hold onto his homegrown methodology to the very end ... his most popular book in his very successful lifetime being his last one: on worms, uncovered in his own garden!

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Daniel Putman

The gold standard of Darwin biographies, part 2

Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2015

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Just like in the first volume of her Darwin biography, Janet Browne’s The Power of Place is clearly written, loaded with interesting anecdotes, and a joy to read. Browne’s deep familiarity with Darwin’s letters and scientific work comes out on every page. The book begins with the publication of Origin of Species and, unlike many other biographies, covers the subject’s later work in great detail. The book reads like it was written by a close friend of Darwin, a friend that is not afraid to point out both his strengths and weaknesses. Darwin’s intense love of detailed work in nature, from orchids to worms, leaves the reader with a real sense of how the power of evolution lies in the details. His explanations, such as many of those in The Descent of Man, were often inadequate, given the lack of information that we have today, but his intuitive leaps were superb. Besides his revolutionary insight into natural selection and the development of life on earth, Darwin’s “gemmules” were clear forerunners of genetic theory and his understanding of facial expressions was a major breakthrough in what has become an important part of psychology.

The later Darwin, plagued constantly by illness, comes across as a gentle and kind person but very subject to the English class system. His close friendship with Alfred Wallace is spelled out in detail. Overall, Browne estimates Darwin wrote 1500 letters a year to both the famous and the not so famous. He was remarkably conscientious; generosity comes across as a major character trait even in the face of tremendous physical pain at times. Yet this same man refused to attend the funerals of the two people most influential in his life – Henslowe and Lyell. Browne, who could have given many excuses for her subject, knows Darwin’s letters and personal circumstances so well that she bluntly calls him “selfish” for not being able to overcome his fears for the sake of his friends’ families. You get a full picture of the man by an author who knows him as well as anyone can. This is a great book. Combined with the first volume, Browne’s Darwin biography stands out in first rank among biographies of scientists, no matter what the field.

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Rob C.

Excellent 2 book biography...a journey into a great man’s life

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2021

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You will never find a more comprehensive biography of Charles Darwin, and it is a must to read both books. This fascinating study is more than just understanding Darwin and what led to his ground breaking work. It is also a study of how Victorian England was rocked to its roots by taking a stance against religious explanations of the origin of man. A must read for anyone remotely interested in Darwin and his life’s work.

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Ronald H. Clark

Uniformly Excellent Biography of Darwin

Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2008

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This is the second volume of Janet Browne's superb biography of Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Browne, who is now Professor of the History of Science at Harvard, wrote both volumes while at the vital WellCome Trust Center at University College London (also the locale of the late Roy Porter). The book is just excellent all the way through. It picks up just at the point when the march of events is forcing Darwin to publish his finding in the epic "On the Origin of Species," when he is 49. Browne develops some interesting insights; such as the importance of the excellent British postal service to Darwin's work, since he communicated and exchanged information with individuals all around the world. In addition, she focuses upon the importance of that most unique institution, Mudie Library, which did so much to circulate Darwin's books throughout Britain, thereby altering CD's intention that his book would be targeted for a small elite audience. The author also has something to say about one of the most interesting Victorian figures, published John Murray, who benefitted from the surge of publishing and literacy in the mid-Victorian period. The profusion of journals and periodicals, such as the Edinburgh Review and the Westminister Quarterly Review, also did much so disseminate Darwin's ideas, as did events such as the Huxley v. the Bishop of Wilberforce debate ("I'd rather be a monkey than a bishop").

Equally interesting and important is Browne's discussion of how Darwin conducted his research and wrote a number of books. His research of heredity, facial expressions, worms, reefs and other topics are all covered. Browne does a good job in discussing all of the debates that erupted after the publication of the "Origin," and this tells us much about the development of Victorian science and intellectual history. Also of note is her discussion of how Darwin's ideas spread, the effects of celebrity on CD and his work, and his views of Christianity. The book is so well written that it is a pleasure to read, as Browne discusses some difficult concepts with such clarity and skill and every reader, no matter how extensive a scientific background, benefits from her treatment.
The book is supported by 63 pages of excellent notes, some helpful illustrations, and a 36 page bibliography. Browne is generally acknowledged as one of the world's leading scholars on the life and work of Darwin. Her involvement as Associate Editor of the 14 volume "Correspondence of Charles Darwin" has finely honed her understanding of Darwin and his thought. We should all be thankful that she is now at Harvard where more Americans can benefit from her superb expertise and insights.

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Phil Webster

Volume 2 of “the definitive Darwin biography”

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 6, 2016

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This book is the second part of a really excellent two-volume biography of Charles Darwin, one which the great evolutionary theorist Ernst Mayr called “the definitive Darwin biography”.

This second volume takes up the story a year or so before the 1859 publication of “On the Origin of Species”. Darwin was dilly-dallying about publishing a book on his theory of natural selection, when, in June 1858, he received a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace in which Wallace enclosed a paper which showed that he had just come up with the same theory. Wallace did not know that Darwin had already had the same idea.

Darwin was torn: he didn’t want to lose the credit for having thought of the theory himself much earlier than Wallace; but on the other hand he didn’t want to treat Wallace badly. Two of Darwin’s scientific friends came up with a solution. They made a joint presentation of Wallace’s paper and some extracts from Darwin’s unpublished writings on the theory to the Linnean Society.

To make matters worse, all this commotion coincided with the illness and then death of the Darwins’ youngest child.

As in the first volume, there is certainly plenty of ammunition in this book to shoot down the ridiculous conspiracy theory which claims that Darwin stole the credit for the theory of natural selection from Wallace. Wallace certainly deserves credit for independently coming up with the same idea, but Wallace himself was always happy to play second fiddle to Darwin. For example, in 1908 Wallace made a speech to the Linnaean Society in which he explicitly defended Darwin’s priority, pointing out that “...the idea occurred to Darwin in October 1838, nearly twenty years earlier than to myself (in February 1858); and that during the whole of that twenty years he had been laboriously collecting evidence...”

Darwin probably started thinking seriously about “transmutation” on the last stretch of his Beagle voyage in 1836. He certainly opened his first notebook on the subject in 1837, and the idea of natural selection as the mechanism of evolutionary change came to him, after reading Malthus, in 1838. In 1842 he wrote what he called the “pencil sketch of my species theory”, and in 1844 he wrote a fuller and more polished version.

Darwin’s letters, notebooks and the two essays/sketches, show beyond question that all the key ideas that Darwin made public in 1859 in “On the Origin of Species” had already been developed by him much earlier.

Stephen Jay Gould once described Darwin as being “radical in his scientific ideas, liberal in his political and social views, and conservative in personal lifestyle...”

This book by Janet Browne shows us that Gould’s summary of Darwin is a perfectly accurate one. Browne describes Darwin’s personality, his personal life, his class position, the social context of nineteenth century England, and the influences which led him to develop his theory of natural selection, as well as Darwin’s researches and the theory itself.

The only thing that I was not happy about with this second volume was the fact that it was not published until seven years after the publication of the first volume. Even allowing for the enormous amount of research that went into these books, that is a long time! I remember that when the first volume came out in 1995 I decided not to get it until the second one was published, so that I could buy and read both together. I didn’t think that I would have to wait for seven years to be able to do that. Still, that’s water under the bridge now. Darwin fans can read, re-read and savour both volumes.

Phil Webster.

One person found this helpful

F Henwood

Fantastic follow up to the first volume

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 27, 2013

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This is the sequel to the first volume of a superb biography, `Voyaging.'

The first is excellent but the second volume is even better. The story carries on from the late 1850s, when Darwin is on the cusp of publishing his `Origin of the Species'. Having spent over twenty years collecting the evidence, a feat that has left him on the brink of exhaustion, he is shocked to discover that a little known explorer called Alfred Russel Wallace has hit upon the very same theory he has. Darwin till now has prevaricated in publishing the results of his researches, dreading the controversy and calumny that he is convinced will be heaped upon him to suggest nature develops according to natural laws needing no guidance from a creator. And he hasn't even talked about man's kinship with the apes yet.

But publish he does, and the book goes on to describe the impact of the idea of evolution as the shockwaves radiate outwards from Down House. As the first volume of this biography attests, Darwin was no natural revolutionary. Much of the subsequent fighting and advocacy for the theory was done for him by people like Thomas Henry Huxley, founder of the so-called X dining club, assiduous propagators of Darwin's work. Browne gives a fascinating account not just of the man but also of the spread and influence of the idea of evolution. The idea that Darwin tore asunder the ties of a pious society is far from the truth. These ties were already being frayed by the intellectual tumult of the time, this tumult reaching into the heart of the Church of England itself with some churchmen even going as far as to question the very foundations of the Christian faith such as the virgin birth and resurrection.

Browne is fascinating in describing the cultural and intellectual impact of Darwin's ideas. That a study based largely on zoological observations, including barnacles, pigeons and livestock, could have provoked such anguished debate about the place of mankind in nature is remarkable. After all, in the Origin of the Species, he did not touch upon mankind's origins. But he touched a nerve: a theory that showed that nature can develop needing no guiding divine hand has obvious implications for the place of human beings in it.

It was not until the 1870s that Darwin actually addressed the topic of human origins - the Descent of Man. Here some of his cultural assumptions shone through - he clearly and unselfconsciously believed in the distinction between savage and civilized peoples, and the superiority of the latter over the former, but this was a cultural, not biological conviction, for he also argued for the common origins and biological unity of mankind, and made the prediction, increasingly borne out by contemporary evidence, that mankind's origins were in Africa. And Darwin did not coin the term survival of the fittest. His preferred term was natural selection but Wallace persuaded Darwin that this term sounded too much like attributing deliberate intention to a natural process and enjoined him to use Herbert Spencer's term instead.

The challenge of a biography detailing the middle and later years of Darwin's life - domesticated and sequestered as he was at Down House - is to convey the firestorm his ideas provoked. Browne's book succeeds in doing this marvelously. We also get a correction to the picture presented by some biographers of a sickly, reclusive Darwin, exaggerated by some of his previous chroniclers. Sick he was much of the time but he had a good deal of support from his wife and family and though he was not a public intellectual in the modern sense of the term, he cultivated links with influential persons whom he could enlist as allies shrewdly, and was canny about taking advantage of new technological mediums like portrait photography to promote his own `brand', as we might put in modern parlance.

In all this, Browne does not neglect the man, the gentleman scholar, a devoted husband and father (like Huxley, their naturalism did not rob them of being able to form deep human attachments), an unlikely revolutionary whose arsenal of ideas was generated in his greenhouse and gardens. And, no, contrary to some rumours, there was no deathbed renunciation of his theory (his wife, Emma, a believer, and who fretted over Darwin's salvation in the hereafter, would surely have recorded such a recantation).

This truly is a monumental biography. Browne spent 14 years of her life writing it. One senses a degree of identification the author has with Darwin and his own colossal struggles to compose his ideas. George Orwell once said that the act of writing was like pulling a demon out of one's mouth. Browne has not pulled out a demon out of hers with this book - she has produced a diamond of a book. One can only award this book five stars.

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BookBeetle

Detailed, intensive, informative

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 24, 2018

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this is an exhaustive account of Darwin's life- it is as though the author, having access to all his correspondence and notes, would not omit any of them. She does not mention all the illuminati of the period, and that is curious considering what an astonishing period it was.
Worth reading, although it is densely written, and not an easy read.

Karen Lamming

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 2, 2015

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A classic

Christina Helms

Stupendo

Reviewed in Italy on April 18, 2015

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Non potevo mettere giù questo libro. Janet Browne è brillantissima. Ha fatto un rittratto di Charles Darwin dettagiato e indimenticabile.

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