Grant Allen sets Darwin’s life against the world he was born into, tracing his family antecedents, his early days, the voyage and the long years of patient work at Down. Rather than treat him as a lone genius, Allen shows him taking the torch from Lamarck and Malthus and handing it on, with lively accounts of experiments such as his discovery that red clover needs humble-bees to set seed.
A compact, enthusiastic biography by a novelist and science writer who was himself a convinced evolutionist. Download the free EPUB.