Darwin in Russian

DARWIN, Charles / KOVALSEVSKY, Vladimir (trans.).

St. Petersburg, Suschinskiy, 1872.

O Vyrazhenii oschuscheniy u cheloveka i zhivotnych [The Expression of the Emotions of Man and Animals].

8vo [22 x 15.5 cm], (1) f., III pp., (1) p. blank, (1) f. errata, 335 pp., (1) p. blank, (18) plates of engravings in text (21 numbered figures), 7 plates of heliotypes in text. Bound in original publisher’s wrappers, shelfmark label on spine, edges untrimm`ed. Wrappers with minor toning and chipping. Pages with very minor occasional spotting.

Rare first Russian edition – published only a month after the English original and here preserved in its original wrappers – of Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions of Man and Animals (1872), a book renowned not only for its insight into the connection between human behavior and evolution, but also for its early use of photographic illustrations (heliotypes). Darwin exerted a special influence on Russian science, literature, and art, with The Expression of the Emotions of Man and Animals being especially revered by Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) and exerting an influence on the nascent behaviorist movement (and by extension, even the dramatic system of Konstantin Stanislavsky [1863-1938]) (see A Vucinich, Darwin in Russian Thought). The work was “translated from the proofs sent by the author” by Vladimir Onufrievich Kovalevsky (1842-83), a paleontologist specializing in equine evolution who previously had collaborated with Darwin and translated his The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1867, beating the English ‘original’ to press, in fact) and The Descent of Man.

OCLC records only one U.S. copy of this work, at Harvard.

* Freeman, F1206.

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