Charles Darwin: After the Origin

Original Scholarship

Charles Darwin: After the Origin, by Sheila Ann Dean

Visiting scholar and curator Sheila Ann Dean has written a book that serves as a companion piece to the exhibition, offering an account of the work Darwin undertook while controversies instigated by the Origin were stirring the Victorian world. She will sign copies of the book, published by Cornell University Library and the Paleontological Research Institution, on Friday, Feb. 13, at the Cornell Store from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Description of the book:

What did Darwin do and think during the twenty-two years after the Origin of Species was published? This book, as a companion to the collaborative 2009 exhibition at Cornell University and the Museum of the Earth, explores a period of time (1859-1882) in Darwin's life that has thus far received little attention. Darwin worked tirelessly to provide further support for his ideas presented in the Origin, and continued original investigations into botanical topics (insectivory, plant movement, hybridism), inheritance in domesticated animals and plants, sexual selection, human descent, animal expression, and the movement of soil by earthworms. This account of Darwin's later work, undertaken while controversies instigated by the Origin were stirring the Victorian world, can only inform today's debates on evolution and its validity.