When Charles Darwin first saw On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life in book form, he is said to have remarked that he found it tough going. Actually, the book, composed in a hurry to forestall his rivals, after 20 years of research, and aimed at that mythical beast “the educated general reader”, is extraordinarily accessible, sometimes even moving, in its lucid simplicity. That’s all the more remarkable for a revolutionary work of scientific theory, arguably the most important book published in the English language during the 19th century.
From a 21st-century perspective, Darwin’s Origin has two roles in this list. First, it is a profoundly influential work of biology, argued in astonishing, and compelling detail. For example, one famous passage (too long to quote in full) describes the ecological benefits to “a large and extremely barren heath” derived from the planting of Scotch fir: “I went to several points of view, whence I could examine hundreds of acres of the unenclosed heath, and literally I could not see a single Scotch fir, except the old planted clumps. But on looking closely between the stems of the heath, I found a multitude of seedlings and little trees, which had been perpetually browsed down by the cattle. In one square yard … I counted 32 little trees; and one of them, judging from the rings of growth, had during 26 years tried to raise its head above the stems of the heath, and had failed. No wonder that, as soon as the land was enclosed, it became thickly clothed with vigorously growing young firs.” [pp 123-24]
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