The First Printing
A first edition of On the Origin of Species
The ask
Our company was acquired this week. My co-founder spent nineteen years on the biology before any of us earned a cent from it. He keeps the Darwin he bought as a student on his desk. I'd like to give him the first edition. Whatever it costs.
The gift
A first edition of On the Origin of Species (1859), one of 1,250 copies printed, in the publisher's original green cloth. A rare-book specialist collates it page by page and writes up its condition and provenance. It is fitted to a cloth box made to measure, with the date of the acquisition tooled on the spine, and is presented in the linen box.
Why it's extraordinary
He has read the student copy for decades. This is the same text as it first reached readers in November 1859, a book that changed his field the way his work changed theirs.
The moment
It sits on the desk beside the student paperback, and the paperback is still the one that gets read.
A curator replies within one business day.
