As well as a stimulating introduction and detailed notes, this edition offers a register of the many writers referred to by Darwin in the text. Dame Gillian Beer is Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature.
Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. For the sixth edition of 1872, the short title was changed to The Origin of Species.