7/9/22

Good in parts. Darwin's life and family always interesting and quite touching. Huxley's less so and once Darwin is off the scene even less. I stopped reading after Huxley got onto his 100th committee.

The author (whoever he is; there's no info about him in the book or online) tries to put across great swathes of philosophical complexities with simple antinomies and metaphors, eg "[in the 19th century, truth] was more like a skeleton in the closet than a treasure in the earth".

And he seems unaware that the moment Huxley is most famous for, his clash of witticisms with Bishop Wilberforce, probably never happened. ( )

This book describes the many challenges for Darwin and Huxley for getting the idea of evolution accepted by the Victorian world. ( )

A double biography of Darwin and Huxley with a lot of good scene setting. Excellent writing.
Read Samoa Aug 2003 ( )

This dual biography of Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley was very informative and mostly an interesting narrative although there were a few places that were slow going when the discussion turned to theology and philosophy. Over all, I enjoyed Irvine's book and didn't find the prose as old-fashioned as others from the '50's. Irvine was looking back from 100 years after the famous Wallace/Darwin paper was presented and attempting to show the world in which it was conceived and the far-reaching consequences it had. Of course, evolution was "in the air" so to speak, but Darwin had the decade's of meticulous data on which to base his version. While Daewin was the stay at home scientist hiding in his study, Huxley was the vocal defender of what he saw as truth.

The introduction to this edition of Irvine's book was written by Julian Huxley, the grandson of Thomas Huxley. I definitely recommend this edition of Irvine's book.