Charles Darwin: A Biography, Vol. 1 - Voyaging Reprint Edition

by Janet Browne (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0691026060

ISBN-10: 0691026068

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Few lives of great men offer so much interest―and so many mysteries―as the life of Charles Darwin, the greatest figure of nineteenth-century science, whose ideas are still inspiring discoveries and controversies more than a hundred years after his death. Yet only now, with the publication of Voyaging, the first of two volumes that will constitute the definitive biography, do we have a truly vivid and comprehensive picture of Darwin as man and as scientist. Drawing upon much new material, supported by an unmatched acquaintance with both the intellectual setting and the voluminous sources, Janet Browne has at last been able to unravel the central enigma of Darwin's career: how did this amiable young gentleman, born into a prosperous provincial English family, grow into a thinker capable of challenging the most basic principles of religion and science? The dramatic story of Voyaging takes us from agonizing personal challenges to the exhilaration of discovery; we see a young, inquisitive Darwin gradually mature, shaping, refining, and finally setting forth the ideas that would at last fall upon the world like a thunderclap in The Origin of Species.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book deserves the adjectives of praise traditionally used by reviewers to describe masterpieces. . . . It is wonderful and marvelous, even magisterial."---Stephen Jay Gould, The New York Review of Books

"There is no better chronicle of Darwin as human being, friend, and indefatigable scientist, nor anywhere a richer description of his milieu, his family life, his social circle, and his scientific connections. Browne's extraordinary knowledge of the literature of the period makes her account particularly insightful.... [A] masterpiece.... Browne knows how to spellbind the reader.... The definitive Darwin biography."---Ernst Mayr, Newsday

"A wonderful and well-rounded portrait.... We watch Darwin grow from a careless and happy young boy to a driven and ambitious young man, and Browne is very good at letting us see the moments when Darwin began to sense the scope of his own powers.... This Darwin is remarkably real."---Jonathan Weiner, The Washington Post

"Exciting and richly evocative." ― Kirkus Reviews

"No other biography has matched Browne's ability to capture so richly the details of Darwin's time and to convey them with such direct and engaging prose." ― Library Journal

Review

"I realized that I had never fully understood Fitzroy or Lyell or Dr. Darwin or Emma ... especially Darwin himself. Janet Browne not only makes these historical figures real, three dimensional people, but she shows so elegantly how they affected and interacted with one another. This is not just another biography of Darwin, but a unique and important contribution; it will outlast all others. The scholarship is ... impeccable."―John Tyler Bonner, Princeton University

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; Reprint edition (April 1, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 622 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0691026068
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691026060
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.02 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.14 x 1.32 x 9.21 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #641,933 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #849 in Environmentalist & Naturalist Biographies
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Joel Marks

Exhaustive with one odd exception

Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2020

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This is an exhaustive biography, and I am loving every page of it. Just finished the first mammoth volume and eagerly anticipate taking up the second (which arrived today ... perfect timing!). But let me offer a qualified recommendation: I don't know if it would be so gripping, and might even be just plain tedious, for someone who was not already an ardent Darwinian.

To me Darwin has always been one of the shining lights of science, and is today perhaps the most important in the culture wars. Just about everyone has accepted the Copernican Revolution, but fully taking in the Darwinian Revolution requires a whole additional order of magnitude of reorientation of one's most basic assumptions. Indeed, even most folks who fully accept evolution and natural selection and its ilk often do not grasp the full implications. Darwin himself probably did not, since this is an on-going process of philosophical, ethical, and existential inquiry. Sometimes, oddly enough, it is the so-called religious fundamentalists who are better at understanding this, I would say; for as cockeyed as their metaphysical articles of faith may be, they are often fully sensitive to the magnitude of what would need to change in the thinking of even the typical secularist if the universe really were wholly material and without a designer.

In Volume I that type of issue is often alluded to but not developed. I assume that is because Volume I mainly takes us through the events and work and thought processes that are leading Darwin to his momentous biological conclusion. So probably Volume II will take a more direct look at the implications of that conclusion for our conception of ourselves and human society's prospects.

Darwin is portrayed as both representative of a common "type" in his day and place -- the English aristocrat who was pretty much free to do as he pleased his whole life and had certain sexist and classist blindspots -- and yet at the same time an unconventional one, in that he was in some ways very liberal minded, open-minded, alive to adventure, passionate, disciplined and hard-working, kind, daring in his thinking. But the book makes clear there were other exceptional specimens of the type, and together they constituted a privileged group of science-minded men who stimulated and assisted one another and enjoyed one another's company. But here again Darwin was out of the already extraordinary ordinary in that he readily enlisted the aid of anyone and everyone in his scientific researches, from the most eminent scholars of the day to farmers, children, and his butler. And everyone was happy to help.

There was just one thing I found odd about this biography. Darwin's full range of experiences as a member of Homo sapiens is portrayed to the nth detail throughout, from the sublimity of tropical scenes and breakthroughs of thought to the "ridiculous" of lifelong physical ailments ... with one exception: sex. In a book which spends several pages telling us about the severe flatulence our hero suffered from in a certain period of his life, there is hardly a hint of his having a libido. This is not to say he avoided sex: He sired 10 children in his marriage. But for a fellow who came to believe that sex is the sine qua non of speciation (by providing the variation on which natural selection could work), it seems exceedingly odd that his attitude toward its manifestation in his own breast would be passed over in almost complete silence in this book.

This leaves the reader to puzzle out for themself (to use a sexless pronoun) whether this is an accurate depiction of this very proper gentleman, for whom sex was solely for procreation and establishing mutually beneficial social and economic arrangements between families, or is more a function of the biographer's (otherwise uninhibited) sensibilities. (But even if the former, I would think it worth remarking on by the biographer.) As things stand we are told that Charles and Emma ate sandwiches in the carriage as they departed their nuptials, but not a word about the first night together of these two virgins in their 30s.

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Kundera

A new light

Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2018

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Charles Darwin must have lived one of the more interesting lives of the mind in modern history. This book focuses on his intellectual journey as it follows his physical voyages. I've read several books about or by Darwin, and found myself saying, "huh, interesting," repeatedly in this one. The personal details about his life are fascinating, and integral to an understanding of his reasoning and exploration. Janet Browne is a fantastic researcher and excellent writer.

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Ronald H. Clark

The First Volume of an Awesome Biography of Darwin

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2010

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This is the first volume (covering roughly 1809-1856) of Janet Browne's amazing biography of Charles Darwin (1809-1882). I earlier reviewed the second volume, "Charles Darwin: Power of Place," on Amazon several years ago and found it superlative--in fact, it was one of the books that sparked my interest in Darwin and Victorian science. I have found that reading Browne is just an immeasurably enjoyable experience. Currently Aramont Professor of the History of Science at Harvard, after a stint at London's impressive Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine while she worked on Darwin's correspondence, the reader immediately senses that Browne is one of the most knowledgeable scholars of Darwin and his development that one is likely to encounter. Both volumes are unhurried, thorough, and crammed with insights. You are in the best of hands when reading this biography.

There are a number of strong points demonstrated in this volume. Browne is very good at blending both personal and family background with Darwin's scientific endeavors--i.e., this is a truly complete biography. She is particularly effective in demonstrating Darwin's scientific methods, how he went about doing his research, keeping his notes, and developing his ideas. So this is also a prime work of intellectual history as well. For example, she helps us understand one of the big mysteries surrounding Darwin: why did he not publish his "Origin" until 1859, more than 20 years after returning from his famous voyage on the Beagle? Browne is also masterful in placing Darwin within the context of Victorian science, so that we know what is going on around him as well as with him. One of the most interesting aspects to this volume is that Browne devotes but 130 of her 543 pages to the Beagle voyage, the critical event in Darwin's development of evolutionary theory. But Browne's ability to relate discoveries made during the Beagle trip to some of Darwin's later ideas as he develops from a rather listless student into a true naturalist, allows us to understand exactly what transpired during this five year sojourn. The initial section of the book consists of some quite interesting chapters on his youth, family background, and education. The reader really begins to develop a grasp of Darwin's character, flaws and strengths after covering these two initial sections.

In my opinion, the real payoff of the book is the final section focusing upon Darwin as a "naturalist" during the period between his return from the Beagle voyage (1836) and just prior to unleashing the "Origin" in 1859. A trained biologist as well as scientific historian, Browne affords the reader invaluable insights into how Darwin's crucial ideas germinated and how he undertook to exploit the fruits of his Beagle voyage and supplement that information with additional types of research. She also covers Darwin's papers and books during this period and his interaction with other scientists (such as Lyell, Huxley, Joseph Hooker, and Richard Owen) and the Victorian scientific establishment. Her prose is clear and quite understandable to general readers without much scientific background such as myself. Her discussion of Darwin's family background during this period, and especially the strains that developed between Darwin and his highly religious wife, also helps to place his scientific development within context.

As usual, Browne's research is impeccable and exhaustive. Her extensive notes and bibliography (circa 1995), a number of illustrations, and a thorough index add substantial strength to the text. On almost every page her incomparable familiarity with Darwin's correspondence in particular and his journals and writings in geneal proves invaluable. This paperback edition from Pinceton is nicely produced, with fine paper, oversized pages and clear typography--a fine job by Quebecor Printing in Martinsburg, WVA. Any serious student of Darwin and Victorian science needs to begin with both volumes of this incredibly rich biography.

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Phil Webster

“The definitive Darwin biography”

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 6, 2016

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This book is the first part of a really excellent two-volume biography of Charles Darwin. If you want a well-written, in-depth and very detailed Darwin biography, then this is the one for you. The great evolutionary theorist Ernst Mayr called it “the definitive Darwin biography”. Browne’s study is, on balance, even better (and definitely even more detailed) than that other great biography, “Darwin”, by Adrian Desmond and James Moore.

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.

This first volume covers Darwin’s childhood and youth, his voyage on the Beagle, and then his life back in England up to 1856, when he finally decided to start writing up his theory in detail for publication.

There is 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 Alfred Russel 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...”

This book shows that 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.

For example, in a letter of 1844 Darwin tentatively let his friend Hooker in on his secret theorising and research: “...I am almost convinced...that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable...I think I have found out (here’s presumption!) the simple way by which species become exquisitely adapted to various ends.” He also set out the theory in an 1857 letter to Asa Gray.

I also find the personal side of Darwin’s story interesting, including, for example, the tragic and moving story of the death of his daughter Anne, and the worries that Darwin’s theories caused for his religious wife, Emma.

There are only two things that I am not happy with Janet Browne about. Firstly, there is the fact that seven years passed between the publication of the two separate volumes of this biography. Even allowing for the enormous amount of research that went into these volumes, that is a long time! I remember that when the first volume was published 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.

My second quibble is that Browne speculates, without any real evidence, about the sexuality of Robert Grant, whom Darwin met in Edinburgh. Darwin ended up losing his respect for Grant because he felt that Grant had appropriated some of Darwin’s own researches. But Browne, uncharacteristically, rather wildly speculates that the rift might also have developed because Darwin might have “proved unresponsive to late-night suggestions of a different nature.” Evidence?

But these two points in no way prevent me from thoroughly recommending this wonderful biography.

Phil Webster.

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BookBeetle

Detailed, intensive, informative as is Volume II

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 24, 2018

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This is not an easy, or a quick read. It has plenty of information - almost too much, perhaps, as the author cannot resist including everything she has found. Perhaps a firmer editor would have resulted in a more structured book?
It has been interesting to read, but the omissions are tiresome - the other great names of the time are not by any means all included or alluded to.

David Conolly

well written scholarly biography

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 1, 2021

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The author fills in much social and family history which helps to make sense of Darin's character, strengths and weaknesses. She also explains the state of geological and biological knowledge and ignorance during the relevant period.

Karen Lamming

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 2, 2015

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Always something new to say about so well known a book. Very thought provoking

Christina Helms

This is probably the best biography I have ever read in my life

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 15, 2015

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This is probably the best biography I have ever read in my life. Beautiful written, witty, observant and even wise. It was impossible to put down. Janet Browne takes her sweet time painting the most detailed portrait imaginable of Charles Darwin, his extended family and the Victorian period. I highly recommend both volumes.

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