Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$629.65 + shipping
Description: NEW EDITION 1878, A REPRINT OF THE SIXTH EDITION 1872, Twentieth Thousand, with additions and corrections to 1872. 8vo, approximately 190 x 120 mm, 7½ x 4½ inches, folding chart, pages: xxi,1-458 including half-title and index, original publisher's green cloth, gilt lettering and decoration to spine, blind-stamped decorative borders to covers, brown endpapers, (the pastedown and the endpaper at front have at some time been replaced and are unsightly, see image, the rear original ones are fine) the bookbinder's small ticket on last pastedown, adverts to verso title page. Binding rubbed, slight shelf wear to edges and corners, inner paper hinge cracked, otherwise a good copy. This is a reprint of the edition of 1876 which contained the final text as Darwin left it and which contained small differences in text from the sixth edition of 1872. The word 'evolution' was used for the first time in the 6th edition of 1872 of The Origin of Species on page 201 (twice) and page 424 (3 times). Darwin had used it before in the first edition of the Descent of Man (1871) but it doesn't appear in The Origin of Species until 1872. The title changed to The Origin of Species from On the Origin of Species in the edition of 1872 and a Glossary was added by W. S. Dallas. See: The Works of Charles Darwin by R. B. Freeman, page 87 No. 403. MORE IMAGES ATTACHED TO THIS LISTING, ALL ZOOMABLE, FURTHER IMAGES ON REQUEST. POSTAGE AT COST.
Seller: Roger Middleton P.B.F.A., Oxford, United Kingdom
Charles Darwin. The Origin of Species. John Murray, London, 1878.
Price: US$850.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: London: John Murray, 1878. Sixth Edition (Twentieth Thousand), with additions and corrections. Octavo. 458 pp., with half title and folding plate facing page 91. Bound in contemporary quarter calf; five raised bands, gilt decorating and black title label to spine; marbled edges and endpapers. Boards worn along edges with exposure, corners bumped, rubbing to joints, and surface cracking to spine. Recent repair to joints; scraping with surface loss to endpapers; binding holding soundly. Bookplate of tea planter Henry Randolph Trafford to front pastedown. Ownership inscription to preliminaries; text block a bit stiff but pages unmarked and legible throughout. A Very Good later printing of the sixth edition, which was originally published in 1872 and was the first to include the word "evolution" though all editions included "evolved" as the final word of text.
Seller: Capitol Hill Books, ABAA, Washington, DC, U.S.A.
Price: US$2862.05 + shipping
Description: Four volumes, mixed editions. 8vo. Uniformly bound in contemporary green full calf, spines with raised bands, gilt lettered red spine labels, the other compartments richly gilt, endpapers and all edges marbled , the early book label of a Walter Palmer of "The Acacias, Reading" to the front free endpapers. "Origin." with a folding plate, illustrations in the text throughout the other works. Foxing to the front and rear of each volume, some rubbing to the extremities, a handsome set of these early issues. "Origin of Species" - sixth edition, 20th thousand, dated 1878 (the second issue of the definitive text published two years earlier); "Various Contrivances." - second edition, revised (preceded only by the first edition of 1862); "Descent of Man" - second edition, 12th thousand, revised and augmented, 1877; "Insectivorous Plants" - second thousand (preceded only by the first issue published in July the same year). Freeman, 403, 801, 948 and 1217 respectively.
Seller: Bow Windows Bookshop (ABA, ILAB), Lewes, United Kingdom