Author's issue. Inscribed by Darwin for his son on the title page, "From The Author", together with four related off-prints all bound in contemporary half-calf over marbled boards. Edges speckled red. Bookplate of his eldest son, William Erasmus Darwin to the front pastedown. A very good copy indeed, with minor spotting to the preliminaries, and some rubbing to the extremities of the binding. Some pencil notations to the margins, chiefly the highlighting of passages or ticks of agreement. Binder's ticket of H. M. Gilbert, Southampton, to front pastedown.

A fine presentation copy of the rare author's issue of Climbing Plants and four other botanical papers from Darwin to his eldest son, who assisted his father in researching each of them.
As Freeman notes, Climbing Plants, Darwin's exploration of the link between plant movement and natural selection, was issued in three forms in 1865; a double number of the Journal and Proceedings of the Linnean Society; a commercial offprint published by Longmans; and the present issue, the author's private offprint printed for Darwin by Taylor & Francis. This issue is rare. No copies have appeared at auction since 1980, and Darwin's correspondence records just seven recipients:
C V Naudin (letter, 18 June 1865)
Henry Holland (letter, 25 Jun 1865)
Thomas Rivers (letter, 6 Jul 1865)
Fritz Muller (letter, 12 Aug 1865)
Alfred Russell Wallace (letter, 18 Sep 1865)
J T Moggridge (letter, 14 Oct 1865)
Ernst Haeckel (letter, 11 Nov 1865)
Although Darwin did not consider himself a taxonomic expert in botany like his friends and correspondents, Joseph Hooker and Asa Gray, "many of the arguments for adaptation, variation, and descent in the Origin hinged on his botanical work, particularly plant geography... after publishing the Origin he carried out a wide range of investigations into the living processes of plants and their adaptations... the stream of books and papers that he published during the last twenty years of his life was greatly admired by botanists, earning him a reputation as a gifted observer and ingenious botanical thinker." (Desmond, Moore and Brown, Charles Darwin)
These five papers, four of which were presented to the Linnean Society and one printed in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, are all based on the botanical research and observation he carried out in the years immediately following the publication of On The Origin Of Species.
Darwin's botanical research was often a domestic enterprise and he would turn to his family for help in his observations, particularly so in 1864 due to ill health. Darwin's letters from this period show a great degree of collaboration with his eldest son William, whose botanical notebook and sketchbook show him to be a diligent observer (Cambridge University Library DAR 117 and DAR 186: 43).
"The greatest assistance... was provided by William, Darwin's eldest son and a banker in Southampton. Their letters reveal their collaborative work in determining what differences in flower structures, in addition to stigma and stamen shape and size, indicated fertility between dimorphic forms. William participated in the detailed observations involved in the study of dimorphism by collecting and measuring flower parts, drawing pictures of pollen-grains, stigmas, and anthers, and sending them to his father." (Frederick Burkhardt, The Correspondence Of Charles Darwin, Volume 12).
It is appropriate that Darwin would have sent his son a presentation copy of the most substantial product of their collaboration, which William then had bound up by his local bookseller in Southampton with offprints of the four other papers on which they collaborated in the 1860s.

PROVENANCE: William Erasmus Darwin, presentation inscription, his bookplate (1839-1914); his sister, Henrietta Litchfield (1843-1927); her niece, Margaret Keynes, née Darwin (1890-1974); thence by descent.

Freeman 835.

Stock ID: 38668