The Quarterly Review. Vol. LXV. Published in December, 1839, & March, 1840
AN EARLY NOTICE OF DARWIN’S FIRST BOOK
EX-COLL. THE LONDON LIBRARY & THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
London: William Clowes & Sons for John Murray, 1840.
Octavo (8 3/16” x 5 3/16”, 207mm x 131mm): π2(π1+2π1) B–U8 X4 Y2(–Y2), Z8 2A–2R8 2S4 [$2 signed]. 308 leaves (160 in issue CXXIX, 148 in issue CXXX), pp. [6] (title, blank,[1] 4pp. contents) 1 2-314; 315 316-601 602 603-610 (8pp. index).
Bound in red buckram, with the gilt armorial supralibros of the House of Commons Library. On the spine, seven panels divided by double gilt fillets. Title gilt to the second panel, number gilt to the third, date gilt to the fourth. All edges of the text-block speckled red.
Bumped at the head, tail and fore-corners, with a little wear. Repairs (sometimes clumsy) to the title-leaf, contents and the first two leaves of the text (π1-B1), as well to the final leaf (2S4); else fine, with a little peripheral tanning. Two House of Commons Library accession stamps (dated 15 Mar 1954), one to each of the paste-downs. Two House of Commons Library deaccession stamps to the front paste-down. Two London Library blind stamps (dated 1841) to the title-leaf (π1) and one to 2S4, as well as an ink-stamp to the backing of π1 (dated 8.MAR.04), with (their?) mechanical stamp of 15280, as well as a “CATALOGUED” stamp.
John Murray’s Quarterly Review was one of the most influential academic periodicals of the XIXc. Published from 1809, the Review played a crucial role in shaping public opinion and intellectual life during the Regency and Victorian eras. The Quarterly Review was designed to rival the more liberal Edinburgh Review — published from 1802 — and aimed to provide a platform for in-depth, thoughtful critiques of literature, politics, science, and philosophy. The publication was widely read by the educated élite of Britain, and often set the intellectual agenda for the period.
This volume (LXV, with issues CXXIX and CXXX, paginated continuously) is of particular interest, as it contains early notices of the voyages of the H.M.S. Adventure and Beagle by Captain Phillip Parker King (1791–1856) and Captain Robert Fitz-Roy (1805–1865). Their convoy set out in 1826 to explore the shores of South America, and the Beagle went on to circumnavigate the globe. In December of 1831, the captains were joined by a young Charles Darwin (1809–1882) as a supernumerary gentleman-naturalist. The voyage of Beagle (her second) was the great formative experience of Darwin’s youth. In his Life and Letters (I.61) he wrote: “The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life, and has determined my whole career...”
Freeman notes that reviews of the time were typically unsigned; the review of Darwin’s publication has traditionally been ascribed to B. Hall; Jim Secord has suggested (in his 2008 edition of Charles Darwin Evolutionary Writings, p. 99) that it is instead from the pen of William Broderip, himself a gentleman naturalist.
The London Library was established in 1841 as an alternative to the British Museum Library. It has long been a bastion of free thought in Britain’s capital. The volume appears to have entered their collection in March of 1904, suggesting that they bought it as part of a broader run of the QR. Although without deaccession stamps from the London Library, we can be confident that it entered the Houses of Parliament — the Commons, in this case, with its red to the Lords’ green — legitimately some 50 years later. In each of these institutions the volume will have been available to the most curious and influential of Britons.
Theodore “Ted” Benttinen (1948-2023) was an MIT-educated oceanographer and explorer who went to both poles on research missions. Benttinen amassed a formidable collection of books of exploration, particularly strong in Pacific voyages as well as in polar accounts. The present volume was lot 87 in the Sotheby’s New York 9 December 2024 sale of his library.
Freeman A515.
Catalogued by GR Murdock.
[1] Imprint verso; here backed and so the imprint is all but invisible.
Item #GRM0005
Price: $700