ABSTRACT
The continued material success of Lyell’s masterpiece makes remarkable reading. The work continued to sell rapidly even after its issue as a four-volume third edition in 1834.
In 1838, the portion dealing with historical geology (the fourth volume of the previous editions) was taken out of The Principles, re-written and published separately as Elements of Geology. This work had gone into six editions by 1865 and was succeeded six years later by a somewhat similar and equally popular The Student’s Elements of Geology. Even the latter was characterized by the Lyellian method of proceeding from the newest or known geological systems back to the oldest or unknown.
