Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection
Publication supported by the Susan Elizabeth Abrams Fund in History of Science
- Contents
- Review Quotes
- Awards

List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Prologue / “An Awful Stretcher”
One / The Ugly Brother
Two / Good Wives
Three / “Bliss Botanic” and “Cocks Heroic”: Two Darwins in the “Temple of Nature”
Four / Beauty Cuts the Knot
Five / Reading the Face of Race
Six / Good Breeding: The Art of Mating
Seven / “Better Than a Dog Anyhow”
Eight / Flirting with Fashion
Nine / Development Matters
Part II: “For Beauty’s Sake”: The Making of Sexual Selection
Ten / Critical Years: From Pigeons to People
Eleven / Putting Female Choice in (Proper) Place
Twelve / The Battle for Beauty: Wallace versus Darwin
Thirteen / Writing the Descent: From Bird’s-Eye View to Masterful Breeder
Fourteen / The Post-Descent Years: Sexual Selection in Crisis, Female Choice at Large
Epilogue / Last Words
Notes
Bibliography
Index
"It troubled Darwin, a privileged white Victorian man, to impute agency to women and aesthetic discrimination to non-Europeans. His peers rejected the theory. But biologists are revisiting it. Science historian Evelleen Richards’s book vividly excavates its origins. Darwin developed his ideas on sexual selection while immersed in fields as diverse as embryology and pigeon breeding. Deeply personal matters such as choosing his wife, Emma, and daily preoccupations such as women’s fashions, also played a part. In Richards’s view, Darwin’s opposition to slavery did not, as others argue, motivate his work on sexual selection. What did was his human attempt to answer scientific, political, social and personal questions."
History of Science Society: Pfizer Award
Short Listed
History of Science Society: Suzanne J. Levinson Prize
Won
Biological Sciences: Evolutionary Biology
History: British and Irish History | History of Ideas
You may purchase this title at these fine bookstores. Outside the USA, see our international sales information.