Alfred Russell Wallace - Hardcover

Raby, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701168382 ISBN 13: 9780701168384

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2001

Synopsis

A biography of scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace. In 1858 Wallace wrote to Charles Darwin and told him he had worked out a theory of natural selection. Darwin's outline and Wallace's paper were presented jointly in London. A year later Darwin published "The Origin of the Species", yet Wallace felt no bitterness and in fact Wallace and Darwin became friends. Wallace had none of the advantages of Darwin. He was born in Usk, Gwent in 1823, he left school at 14 and in his mid-20s he spent four years in the Amazon collecting for musuems, only to lose it all in a shipboard fire. He later went to the East Indies where he began an eight year trek and discovered countless unknown species and identified the point of divide between Asian and Australian fauna, now known as "Wallace's Line". This biography reveals Wallace as a courageous, unconventional explorer who loved the wild and the independent spirit of the people he met. When he returned to England he retreated into country life and stayed vital and alert until his death at the age of 90, in 1913. This biography hopes to put Alfred Russel Wallace back into the centre stage of the science world.

About this title

Review

"With this marvelously readable biography of Alfred Russel Wallace, Raby has rescued [this] forgotten pioneer from oblivion. . . . 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."--Booklist

"Raby's accomplished study is the first in some years and adds greater insight into this likeable underdog's personality."--Publishers Weekly

"Even by Victorian standards, Wallace was a titan of self-effacement. . . . If this well-researched and graceful biography doesn't solve the riddle of Wallace, it nicely conveys the riddle's many dimensions. . . . [Wallace was] a man, in short, who occasionally struck colleagues as a crackpot; and yet, in the end, a man who was in some ways more admirable than the much-admired Darwin."--Robert Wright, New York Times Book Review

"Wallace was the author of some 20 books and 700 other publications. . . . Raby has worked with these sources over several years and supplemented them with examinations of unpublished notebooks and letters. . . . He has produced a congenial account of Wallace's life, major interests, and activities for the general reader."--Gareth Nelson, Science

"Peter Raby's life of Wallace catches the charm, daring, and high- seriousness of the age, while scrupulously measuring Wallace's distinction as a man and a scientist."--Guy Davenport, New Criterion

"[It] provides a focused and balanced narrative of Wallace's life, in which his exotic travels are placed in the context of his eventful life story. . . .I would recommend this tastefully illustrated book to general readers as a good introduction to one of Britain's more charismatic and difficult figures of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."--Jane R. Camerini, Nature

"A well-researched, graceful biography."--New York Times Book Review

"A revealing look at a humble hero of science."--Library Journal

"An engaging account of Wallace's long, eventful, and extraordinarily productive life."--Richard Milner, Natural History

"This authoritative biography is an excellent and inspiring read."--Hannah Atkins, New Scientist

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

Edition details

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0701168382
• ISBN 13: 9780701168384
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352