The author cites Darwin’s use of Latin in a footnote on p.13 of Descent, vol. 1 which veiled a statement on baboons’ sexual attraction to human females. Here, the author not only translates elements of the Latin into English but also provides an…
The author reassures his audience that he has dealt with his subject matter with great delicacy and therefore, unlike Darwin, not found it necessary “to cloak any part of [the] lecture in the obscurity of a learned language”.
A review of Descent in the popular American journal Harper’s New Monthly, which misquoted the title of the book in the same way as the Bradford Observer.
A review of Descent published in the Bradford Observer which adopted the common strategy of substituting the word ‘sex’ for the more palatable ‘sexes’ in the title of Descent.
The delicate and difficult nature of its content made it tricky for a reviewer from the literary journal Athenaeum to discuss certain sections of Descent at any considerable length.
The official organ of the Philosophical Radicals, the Westminster Review, also praised Darwin for handling sensitive subject matter in a temperate, cautious and modest way.