"Even by Victorian standards, Wallace was a titan of self-effacement. "Raby's accomplished study is the first in some years and adds greater insight into this likeable underdog's personality."- Publishers Weekly 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 "With this marvelously readable biography of Alfred Russel Wallace, Raby has rescued forgotten pioneer from oblivion. This stirring biography - the first for many years - puts him back at center stage, where he belongs. Wallace is one of the neglected giants of the history of science and ideas. Sensitive and self-effacing, he was an ardent socialist - and spiritualist. He penned a classic volume on his travels, founded the discipline of biogeography, promoted natural selection, and produced a distinctive account of mind and consciousness in man. Yet two years later he was off to the East Indies on a vast eight-year trek here he discovered countless species and identified the point of divide between Asian and Australian fauna, ‘Wallace’s Line.’Īfter his return, he plunged into numerous controversies and published regularly until his death at the age of ninety, in 1913. A largely self-educated native of Wales, he spent four years in the Amazon in his mid-twenties collecting specimens for museums and wealthy patrons, only to lose his finds in a shipboard fire in the mid-Atlantic. He draws more extensively on Wallace’s correspondence than has any previous biographer and offers a revealing yet balanced account of the relationship between Wallace and Darwin. With vigor and sensitivity, Peter Raby reveals his subject as a courageous, unconventional explorer and a man of exceptional humanity. This new biography of Wallace traces the development of one of the most remarkable scientific travelers, naturalists, and thinkers of the nineteenth century. A year later, with Wallace still on the opposite side of the globe, Darwin published On the Origin of Species. ![]() Within two weeks, his outline and Wallace’s paper were presented jointly in London. Darwin was aghast - his work of decades was about to be scooped. In 1858, Alfred Russel Wallace, aged thirty-five, weak with malaria, isolated in the Spice Islands, wrote to Charles Darwin: he had, he said excitedly, worked out a theory of natural selection.
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