A RARE first edition of Charles Darwin’s greatest work The Origin of Species is to go under the hammer at an Edinburgh auction house this week.
Valued between £10,000 and £15,000 the stunning tome has been described as “one of the most important books ever published” and will be sold by auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull on June 5.
All 1250 copies of the first edition ever printed sold out on the first day, and a second edition of 3000 copies also sold out shortly afterwards.
Simon Vickers, Book Specialist at Lyon & Turnbull, said “This particular copy of The Origin of Species was found in a house near Inverness, it has been in the family a long time.
“The family has no known connection to Darwin, and it may have been bought on its first publication.
“It is particularly fitting that we are selling the book in Darwin’s anniversary year.”
Charles Robert Darwin attended Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities, but it was his five year voyage on HMS Beagle that made him famous.
In 1859 his book ‘The Origin of Species’ established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature.
Darwin died on the 19th April 1882, aged 73, at his home Down House, Kent. In recognition of the celebrated scientist’s pre-eminence, he was one of only five 19th-century UK non-royal personages to be honoured by a state funeral and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
