Darwin page 92 autobiography of a face

Life and Letters and Autobiography

An introduction by R. B. Freeman

This heading is used to contain the original edition of Life and letters, which is the first and basic life of Darwin, as well as its American and foreign language equivalents.

The work contains the first published version of Darwin's autobiography, which was edited to avoid giving offence to his widow, and therefore the heading also includes the printings of the full text which first appeared in English in 1958, although it had appeared in Russian translation, independently transcribed from the manuscript, in the previous year.

It also includes the one volume abridgement which first appeared in 1892.

The original edition went through five printings, totalling seven thousand copies, in little more than a year, each one being slightly corrected, and also appeared, in two instead of three volumes, in America with frequent reprints.

The abridged edition is not to be considered merely as a short, and cheap vers