Chritopher Irmscher in The Wall Street Journal:
“That everlasting Origin,” Charles Darwin complained in 1868 as he was readying yet another version of “On the Origin of Species,” first published in 1859. “I am sick of correcting.” Yet he went on correcting, as he had done for several previous editions, cutting and replacing words, rearranging sentences, even adding a new chapter to the sixth edition. It was as if the message Darwin hoped to convey—that life was a constant process of loss, change and renewal—was also true of the book that has come to define him.
If Darwin (1809-82) was a committed reviser, it appears that his biographer Janet Browne, an emeritus professor of scientific history at Harvard, has taken some inspiration from her subject. Ms. Browne’s magnificent life of the naturalist, originally published in two volumes in 1995 and 2002, is now available in a shortened and updated version.
More here.
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