Volume 1 of a biography

Charles Darwin: Voyaging

'An astonishingly fresh picture of the great naturalist - Janet Browne's book is a triumph, the closest we can come to getting inside Darwin's mind' Sunday Telegraph

Brilliantly penetrating...utterly riveting

Browne knows how to spellbind the reader... The definitive Darwin biography

An authoritative and highly readable biography which uncovers the complex process of scientific discovery

It is wonderful and marvellous, even magisterial

Splendid. Her qualifications as a trained biologist, historian of science and skilled editor of the correspondence out her in an ideal position... A wonderful read

Janet Browne is a zoologist and historian of science. She was formerly a Professor in the History of Biology at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College, London. She is currently the Aramont Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University.

Few lives of great men offer so much interest - and so many mysteries - as the life of Charles Darwin, the greatest figure of nineteenth-century science, whose ideas are still inspiring discoveries and controversies more than 100 years after his death. Yet, only with the publication of Voyaging, the first volume of this acclaimed biography, do we have a truly vivid and comprehensive picture of Darwin as a man and a scientist. 
 
The second and final volume of Janet Browne's biography of Darwin - The Power of Place - is also available from Pimlico.

Janet Browne

One of the most distinguished of all modern biographies

Her first book, Voyaging, was hailed as a magisterial introduction to Darwin's life, a work that vividly evoked period, character and ideas. The only question was: could she follow it up? It has taken seven years to get an answer: an emphatic yes

Browne's first volume was warmly received when it appeared seven years ago, and the second triumphantly fulfils its promise...[a] remarkable book

A marvellous book... This second part of the life stands on its own.  Soothing, unhurried and absorbing

The Power at Place

This concluding volume of Janet Browne's biography covers the transformation in Darwin's life after the first unexpected announcement of the theory of evolution by natural selection and the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859. Always a private man, Darwin found himself a controversial figure, reviewed and discussed in circles that stretched far beyond the boundaries of Victorian science. 
 
Janet Browne here examines the wider publishing world of Victorian England and the different audiences that responded to the ideas of one of the leading thinkers of the nineteenth century and considers the Darwinian revolution from Darwin's point of view.

Janet Browne

Praise for Charles Darwin Volume 2

One of the most distinguished of all modern biographies

A monumental and absorbing biography

Her first book, Voyaging, was hailed as a magisterial introduction to Darwin's life, a work that vividly evoked period, character and ideas. The only question was: could she follow it up? It has taken seven y ...

One of the most distinguished of all modern biographies

A monumental and absorbing biography

Her first book, Voyaging, was hailed as a magisterial introduction to Darwin's life, a work that vividly evoked period, character and ideas. The only question was: could she follow it up? It has taken seven y ...

One of the most distinguished of all modern biographies

A monumental and absorbing biography

Her first book, Voyaging, was hailed as a magisterial introduction to Darwin's life, a work that vividly evoked period, character and ideas. The only question was: could she follow it up? It has taken seven y ...

Books by Janet Browne

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter