Alfred Russel Wallace - A narrative of travels on the Amazon and the Rio Negro - 1895

I have here for sale a book entitled A Narrative of travels on the Amazon and the Rio Negro with an Account of the Native Tribes and Observations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley, by Alfred Russel Wallace. It is part of the Minerva Library of Famous Books, published by Ward Lock and Co in 1895. Its a Fifth Edition, there are 16 full page b/w plates which includes a frontispiece portrait of Wallace and a map of the Amazon and its basin.


Alfred Russel Wallace was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He was a contemporary of Darwin's and independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection; his 1858 paper on the subject was published that year alongside extracts from Charles Darwin's earlier writings on the topic. It spurred Darwin to set aside the "big species book" he was drafting and quickly write an abstract of it, which was published in 1859 as On the Origin of Species.


Bound in publisher's original khaki cloth hardboards with black title lettering inside a frame to the front board and in gilt to the spine. Pencil prize inscription to front pastedown, floral decorated endpapers are tanned. Boards firm. Pages themselves are clean and firm. 363 pages, 19 x 13 cm.