HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods.’Still considered one of the most important and groundbreaking works of science ever written, Darwin’s eminently readable exploration of the evolutionary process challenged most of the strong beliefs of the Western world....
When the young naturalist Darwin set sail on a round-the-world expedition at the end of 1831, it was only with a vague notion that the relationships between all life forms, both present and extinct, were more complex than the Christian version of the world’s creation purported them to be. During his five-year voyage of discovery on board HMS Beagle and more than two decades subsequently devoted to research, he painstakingly collected a mass of evidence from across the planet – from Paraguay and...