The last issue printed in Darwin's lifetime
DARWIN, Charles Robert. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: William Clowes and Sons for John Murray, 1880.
8vo. Original green cloth, boards with blind-ruled borders, spine titled in gilt, brown endpapers; pp. xxi, [1 (blank)], 458, folding lithographic plate by W. West; a little spotting to endpapers, overall a fresh copy in an unusually bright binding.
Sixth edition, twenty second thousand. The last issue to be printed in Darwin's lifetime. Apart from the change of the title to The Origin of Species, and the addition of a glossary, compiled by W.S. Dallas, the sixth edition is notable as that in which "the word `evolution' occurs for the first time. It had been used in the first edition of The descent of man in the previous year, but not before in this work. `Evolved' had been the last word of the text in all previous editions, but `evolution' had been omitted, perhaps to avoid confusion with the use of the word by Herbert Spencer or with its more particular embryological meaning. The word had however been used in its transformist sense by Lyell as early as 1832 (Principles of Geology […]). In this edition it occurs twice on page 201 and three times on page 424" (Freeman, pp. 79-80).
Freeman 405.
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