DARWIN, Charles (1809-82). De l' Origine des Especes.

DARWIN, Charles (1809-82).  De l’ Origine des Espèces ou des Lois du Progrès chez lestres Organisés … Traduit en français sur la Troisième Édition avec l’ autorisation de l’ Auteur par Mlle. Clémence-Auguste Royer avec une Préface et des Notes du Traducteur. Paris: Guillaumin et Cie … Victor Masson et Fils, 1862. 8vo (188 x 120mm). Half title, folding lithographed plate (first gathering detached, variable but mainly light and marginal spotting and staining, plate lightly browned at margins). Original pale green printed wrappers, uncut (very lightly spotted, some very minor fraying, upper wrapper and backstrip creased), modern protective book box. Provenance: from the Collection of Peter and Margarethe Braune. FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH. Dibner Heralds 199: “The most important single work in science”; Freeman 655 (French edition, not mentioning the plate): “Certainly the most important biological book ever written”; Garrison-Morton 220; Heirs of Hippocrates 1724; Norman 593; PMM 344(b); Waller 10786. (Most references citing the first (English) edition of 1859.) “The outstanding difficulty was to discover the means by which the infinite variety of living organisms could have been produced within the limits of geological time. In accomplishing this Darwin not only drew an entirely new picture of the workings of organic nature; he revolutionized our methods of thinking and our outlook on the natural order of things” (PMM). The translation of this first French edition was made by Clémence-Auguste Royer (1830-1902), who also wrote the 59-page preface and provided numerous footnotes. Her input was controversial, and not just because of her gender, which, in the view of some contemporary male critics, alone disqualified her from being able to fully digest Darwin’s complex ideas. Darwin, who appears not to have heard of Royer before her translation appeared, was more ambivalent on the matter. In a letter to the American botanist, Asa Gray, he wrote: “I received 2 or 3 days ago a French translation of the Origin by a Madelle. Royer, who must be one of the cleverest and oddest women in Europe: is an ardent deist and hates Christianity, and declares that natural selection and the struggle for life will explain all morality, the nature of man, politicks, etc. etc.!! She makes very curious and good hits, and says she shall publish a book on these subjects, and a strange production it will be.” The ‘strange production’ turned out to be Royer’s L’ Origine de l’ Homme et des Sociétés published in 1870 which anticipated some of the ideas Darwin expressed in his own The Descent of Man published a year later.