“Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children—those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own—being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder!…”
As most naturalists do, I like to stop for at least a few moments on anniversaries of particular scientific significance in order to acknowledge and contemplate what or who that anniversary commemorates and where we would be had that thing not happened or that person not been born. Such a day is 12 February, the date on which Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZS was born.
While On the Origin of Species is generally said to be Darwin’s most influential work, his The Voyage of the Beagle is likely his most approachable work for the general reader. And why wouldn’t it be? After all, first-person travelogues make for exciting reading, combining both the narrative of the adventure with the author’s running commentary upon it.
I thought I’d take a short break from writing a review of one of the most problematic books I’ve yet read about Charles Darwin to make a recommendation of one of the best collections I know of some of the most important and frequently referenced books he himself wrote.