Charles Darwin the man who discovered evolution? The man who killed off God? Or a flawed man of his age part genius part ruthless careerist who would not acknowledge his debts to other thinkers? In this bold new life
- the first single volume biography in twenty-five years
- A N Wilson the acclaimed author of The Victorians & God&s Funeral goes in search of the celebrated but contradictory figure Charles Darwin Darwin was described by his friend & champion Thomas Huxley as a &symbol& But what did he symbolize? In Wilson&s portrait both sympathetic & critical Darwin was two men On the one hand he was a naturalist of genius a patient & precise collector & curator who greatly expanded the possibilities of taxonomy & geology On the other hand Darwin a seemingly diffident man who appeared gentle & even lazy hid a burning ambition to be a universal genius He longed to have a theory which explained everything But was Darwin&s 1859 master work On the Origin of Species really what it seemed a work about natural history? Or was it in fact a consolation myth for the Victorian middle classes reassuring them that the selfishness & indifference to the poor were part of Nature&s grand plan? Charles Darwin Victorian Mythmaker is a radical reappraisal of one of the great Victorians a book which isn&t afraid to challenge the Darwinian orthodoxy while bringing us closer to the man his revolutionary idea & the wider Victorian age