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Auction: 16043 - Autographs, Historical Documents, Ephemera and Postal History
Lot: 77

Documents
Andrew Lang
1897 "Higgins, the Inventor of Evolution"; autograph manuscript with 2 ALS. from St. Andrews, 6 Feb. [1897]. Bound together 8 pp. with calligraphic. title page in red and black, auburn full morocco (c. 1900, signed “Sangorski & Sutcliffe”) with giltstamped title and geometrical gilt fillets to covers and spine. Gilt inner dentelles; leading edges gilt.


In his ironic letter to the editor of "The Academy and Literature", he points out that one "Mr. Higgins" in 1798 expressed an idea so similar to Darwin’s that the former should be credited with this "epoch-making conjecture": "Sir, – It is indeed a common error of the ‘averagely well-read man’, as you quote Mr Grant Allen, to credit Mr Darwin with having invented ‘the Theory of Evolution.’ The name of Higgins is (in this connection) forgotten by the averagiously [!] ignorant citizen, yet I claim for Higgins priority to Mr Darwin and even to Mr Spencer. In fact, unless either of these savants published his theory before April 1798, there can be no doubt about the matter ...". The place of publication of Higgins’s supposed theory is a note to "a somewhat erotic poem, ‘The Loves of the Triangles’", in the April 1778 issue of the conservative periodical "The Anti-Jacobin", and the "Mr. Higgins" in question was, in fact, a favorite butt of this journal. Under this fictitious name, the "Anti-Jacobin" was wont to attack Coleridge, Southey, and Godwin, as well as Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, whose "Loves of the Plants" was satirized in Frere’s and Canning’s "Loves of the Triangles". Bound with are two ALS by Lang in which he refers to the present essay. Photo

Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales.

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