Alfred Russel Wallace

Description

A biography of scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace. In 1858 Wallace wrote to Charles Darwin and told him he had worked out a theory of natural selection. Darwin's outline and Wallace's paper were presented jointly in London. A year later Darwin published "The Origin of the Species", yet Wallace felt no bitterness and in fact Wallace and Darwin became friends. Wallace had none of the advantages of Darwin. He was born in Usk, Gwent in 1823, he left school at 14 and in his mid-20s he spent four years in the Amazon collecting for musuems, only to lose it all in a shipboard fire. He later went to the East Indies where he began an eight year trek and discovered countless unknown species and identified the point of divide between Asian and Australian fauna, now known as "Wallace's Line". This biography reveals Wallace as a courageous, unconventional explorer who loved the wild and the independent spirit of the people he met. When he returned to England he retreated into country life and stayed vital and alert until his death at the age of 90, in 1913. This biography hopes to put Alfred Russel Wallace back into the centre stage of the science world.

Peter Raby is Research Reader in English and Drama at Homerton College, Cambridge. His previous books include Fair Ophelia; a Life of Harriet Smithson Berlioz and the widely praised biography, Samuel Butler, as well as Bright Paradise- Victorian Scientific Travellers, and a recent study, Aubrey Beardsley and the 1890s. He also writes for the theatre and is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde. He lives near Cambridge, on the edge of the Fens.