The Voyage of the Beagle (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature) - Softcover

Many people who have planned to read The Voyage of the Beagle and been deterred by its length and scientific aspects will find the answer here in a carefully and skillfully abridged edition, cut to half the length, which gives the continuity of text, Darwin's own words, and the observations and episodes that make it memorable as a human document. Here is a classic, the record of an enquiring mind seeking scientific truth. Here is evident the growth of the man. An introductory biography places the importance of this trip in Darwin's life; introductory bits for each chapter provide an analysis of the voyage and its scientific meaning along with the actual text. This work is significant in view of additional material available in the last 35 years, much of it Darwin's own writings, but hitherto unpublished in book form. A bibliography provides not only original sources but additional material for study. --Kirkus Reviews

Charles Darwin's travels around the world as an independent naturalist on HMS Beagle between 1831 and 1836 impressed upon him a sense of the natural world's beauty and sublimity which language could barely capture. Words, he said, were inadequate to convey to those who have not visited the inter-tropical regions, the sensation of delight which the mind experiences'. Yet in a travel journal which takes the reader from the coasts and interiors of South America to South Sea Islands, Darwin's descriptive powers are constantly challenged, but never once overcome. In addition, The Voyage of the Beagle displays Darwin's powerful, speculative mind at work, posing searching questions about the complex relation between the Earth's structure, animal forms, anthropology and the origins of life itself.