Neither dense nor affected, however, the period piece reads as naturally as if its prose were our own. The genius of the novel is its convincing immersion in the language of its time, the mid-nineteenth century. Wallace’s status as social outsider, beside the more established standing of Darwin and his connections with Lyell and Hooker (the latter represented by the fictitious composite character Newcastle), conspired to deprive him of fuller credit for his accomplished work in advancing the controversial new theory, especially as the younger Wallace chose to go through Darwin himself to present his paper first explicating it. “A triumph of biographical fiction, an utterly convincing character study of one of the most poignant figures in the history of science. From oppressive jungle to mid-Victorian London, this is a disturbing tale of money, class, faith and discrimination. The Evolutionist tells of one man’s determination to seek out his own truths in his own unique way and the price he pays. But then Wallace returns to England where his advocacy for ideas ranging from socialism to spiritualism launches him on a collision course with the men at the very heart of the scientific establishment, including Darwin. Darwin soon achieves world-renown and Wallace earns, if nothing else, widespread grudging respect. Unbeknownst to Wallace, Darwin has been secretly penning a near-identical version of the same evolutionary theory for twenty years. To circulate his discovery, he contacts a distant acquaintance Charles Darwin. One night, suffering from fever and hallucination, Wallace solves the greatest mystery of the era: the origin of species. He collects specimens: beetles, moths, ants and birds that sell for pennies apiece in England. In the remote tropics a young British naturalist, Alfred Wallace, toils in obscurity. The story of an extraordinary life and adventure told in the form of a fiction biography.ġ858: The Malay Archipelago. Description The Evolutionist: The Strange Tale of Alfred Russel Wallace
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