Alfred Russel Wallace: A Life. - Hardcover

Raby, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691006954 ISBN 13: 9780691006956

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2001

Synopsis

In 1858, Alfred Russel Wallace, aged thirty-five, weak with malaria, isolated in the Spice Islands, wrote to Charles Darwin: he had, he said excitedly, worked out a theory of natural selection. Darwin was aghast--his work of decades was about to be scooped. Within two weeks, his outline and Wallace's paper were presented jointly in London. A year later, with Wallace still on the opposite side of the globe, Darwin published On the Origin of Species.


This new biography of Wallace traces the development of one of the most remarkable scientific travelers, naturalists, and thinkers of the nineteenth century. With vigor and sensitivity, Peter Raby reveals his subject as a courageous, unconventional explorer and a man of exceptional humanity. He draws more extensively on Wallace's correspondence than has any previous biographer and offers a revealing yet balanced account of the relationship between Wallace and Darwin.


Wallace lacked Darwin's advantages. A largely self-educated native of Wales, he spent four years in the Amazon in his mid-twenties collecting specimens for museums and wealthy patrons, only to lose his finds in a shipboard fire in the mid-Atlantic. He vowed never to travel again. Yet two years later he was off to the East Indies on a vast eight-year trek; here he discovered countless species and identified the point of divide between Asian and Australian fauna, 'Wallace's Line.'


After his return, he plunged into numerous controversies and published regularly until his death at the age of ninety, in 1913. He penned a classic volume on his travels, founded the discipline of biogeography, promoted natural selection, and produced a distinctive account of mind and consciousness in man. Sensitive and self-effacing, he was an ardent socialist--and spiritualist. Wallace is one of the neglected giants of the history of science and ideas. This stirring biography--the first for many years--puts him back at center stage, where he belongs.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Raby lectures in Drama and English at Homerton College, University of Cambridge. He is the author of the widely praised biography Samuel Butler, Bright Paradise: Victorian Scientific Travellers (Princeton), Fair Ophelia: A Life of Harriet Smithson Berlioz, and Aubrey Beardsley and the 1890s. He also writes extensively on theater and is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde and The Cambridge Companion to Pinter (forthcoming).

From the Back Cover

"This delightfully written biography is a real find. The subject is timely, and the author brings a lively sensibility and sympathy to Wallace's situation in the evolutionary story without falling prey to over-sensationalist hysteria. Wallace had a marvelously interesting life and deserves the extensive treatment that he has been given here. The chapters concerning Wallace's travels simultaneously convey the intensity of the experience and the achievements and dangers. Further, he treats the Victorian context with a light and sure touch."--Janet Browne, author of Voyaging, a biography of Charles Darwin

From the Inside Flap

"This delightfully written biography is a real find. The subject is timely, and the author brings a lively sensibility and sympathy to Wallace's situation in the evolutionary story without falling prey to over-sensationalist hysteria. Wallace had a marvelously interesting life and deserves the extensive treatment that he has been given here. The chapters concerning Wallace's travels simultaneously convey the intensity of the experience and the achievements and dangers. Further, he treats the Victorian context with a light and sure touch."--Janet Browne, author of Voyaging, a biography of Charles Darwin

Reviews

Darwin's competitor for proving a theory of natural selection was stuck in the Spice Islands, malarial and enjoying a less hulking reputation than his colleague did. In Alfred Russel Wallace: A Life, Peter Raby (Samuel Butler) shows that, save for these setbacks, Wallace might have been our man on evolution. Like other biographers before him, Raby, who lectures on Drama and English at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, describes the disastrous fire that consumed four years' worth of specimens Wallace had collected in the Amazon, the essay that Wallace sent to Darwin revealing his ideas about natural selection, Darwin's rush to publish his ideas first, Wallace's ongoing but lesser achievements, his long, energetic career. Though boasting no original material (Wallace's life is an open book), Raby's accomplished study is the first in some years and adds greater insight into this likeable underdog's personality.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

*Starred Review* The fame of Charles Darwin so outshines that of any contemporary biologist that it stuns many students to learn that Darwin must share the credit for discovering natural selection--the driving force behind evolution--with a brilliant scientist now usually consigned to the footnotes. With this marvelously readable biography of Alfred Russel Wallace, Raby has rescued that forgotten pioneer from oblivion. Because of his full elaboration of evolutionary theory, Darwin did eventually earn a higher place in the scientific pantheon--Raby makes short shrift of the sensational conjecture that Darwin stole his theory from Wallace. But why has Wallace--an independent discoverer of the evolutionary secret and one of the most daring and widely traveled naturalists of all time--been relegated to obscurity? The answer lies largely in the scientific community's embarrassment at how this great thinker and explorer entangled himself during his later years in political controversy and spiritualist enthusiasm. Detailing Wallace's crusades against vaccinations and in defense of seances, Raby confronts the scientist's credulity and wrongheadedness; yet he also highlights the lifelong streak of stubborn independence that made possible the early scientific breakthroughs. In capturing the cross-grained complexities of this exceptional collector of beetles and birds, Raby gives readers a fascinating specimen of the most mysterious and unpredictable species of all. Bryce Christensen
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Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691006954
• ISBN 13: 9780691006956
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352