Darwin's On the Origin of Species went on sale
On this day · 24 November 1859
On 24 November 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, and the entire trade printing was snapped up almost at once.
On 24 November 1859, the London publisher John Murray issued Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, laying out his case that life evolves through natural selection. After two decades of cautious notes and specimens, Darwin had finally gone to press, partly spurred by a younger naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, reaching similar conclusions.
The print run was modest — about 1,250 copies, of which roughly 1,192 were available for sale. Murray had offered the book to the trade at his autumn sale on 22 November, and booksellers took up the whole stock almost immediately, the origin of the popular claim that it “sold out on the first day.”
Scholars now note the famous one-day sell-out is tidier in legend than in fact.
Whether or not every copy reached a reader at once, demand was real: a second, enlarged edition of 3,000 copies followed weeks later, in January 1860, and the argument soon reshaped biology entirely.
Sources & references
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