Charles Darwin ─ Voyaging : A Biography

Few lives of great men offer so much interest - and so many mysteries - as the life of Charles Darwin, the greatest figure of nineteenth-century science, whose ideas are still inspiring discoveries and controversies more than a hundred years after his death.
Yet only now, with the publication of Voyaging, the first of two volumes that will constitute the definitive biography, do we have a truly vivid and comprehensive picture of Darwin as a man and a scientist. Drawing upon much new material, supported by an unmatched acquaintance with both the intellectual setting and the voluminous sources, Janet Browne has at last been able to unravel the central enigma of Darwin's career: how did this amiable young gentleman, born into a prosperous provincial English family, grow into a thinker capable of challenging the most basic principles of religion and science?
As Janet Browne makes clear, Darwin's story was also the story of the era. For he could not have achieved his great work on his own. Without his clubbable friends in London scientific circles, who supplied him with information and provoked his thinking, he might never have hit upon the principle of natural selection, or received a serious hearing for his theories when they matured. Voyaging breaks important new ground in showing how his own life cannot be understood except in the context of a richly complex Victorian society.
As a historian and a highly experienced editor of Darwin's correspondence, Janet Browne is uniquely equipped to bring us the man in his world. Wonderfully written, scientifically sophisticated, lively and profound, her book is a life of Darwin for our times.

Janet Browne is at present lecturer in the history of biology at the Wellcome Institute.