Chapter Note on Editions of The Origin of Species - Study Guide by Charles Darwin

Note on Editions

This Study Guide was prepared from the Second Edition of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859), with references to the significant changes made to later editions. Gillian Beer writes in the introduction to the 1998 Oxford World's Classics text that the Second Edition "represents Darwin's immediate urgent response to the private and public reception of the Origin. Six editions were issued between 1859 and 1872 and these editions introduced considerable revisions, amplifications, corrections and new material." The last four editions "move the text increasingly far away from many of Darwin's initial arguments in an attempt to assimilate the responses and critiques of his contemporaries."