On the Origin of Species
Darwin calls the book one long argument, and it is: observation piled on observation, with objections raised and answered in the same patient voice. There is no single revelation. The idea of natural selection emerges from chapters on variation, inheritance, fossils and geography until it seems almost unavoidable.
The first edition sold out on the day of publication, and the book has been misread as a license for competition ever since. Darwin's own emphasis is on dependence and adaptation, not triumph. Read the introduction and the chapter on the geological record if you want the argument without the Victorian examples.
Public-domain status
First published in 1859. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Charles Darwin died in 1882, so this work has been free to republish there since 1953.
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