ABSTRACT
Subsequent to the first publication of his book in 1859, Darwin published a further six editions of the Origin. Each of these supposedly represented an improvement on the original version. And so, after Darwin’s death, readers were left with a problem to solve: which edition is the best? For a long time, readers favoured the final, sixth edition, taken to be the one Darwin had thought over for the longest time; the one containing his final words. More recently, however (i.e., since the 1950s), readers (especially biologists like Darlington or Mayr) have striven to restore the Origin to its primal vigour, and so have favoured the first edition over any subsequent ones. In fact, choosing the “best edition” of the Origin is highly dependent on the goals one is pursuing. Hence, the choice of the appropriate version of the Origin and the reading one then makes of it are both co-conditioned: different versions of the text convey different meanings and various views of Darwin are best supported by one edition instead of others.
