Was Decent Decent?

‘Evolution and Faith’, The Dublin Review 17:33 (July, 1871), p. 3

The Dublin Review, an influential Catholic periodical, applauded Darwin for stripping a potentially offensive subject of all offensiveness.

‘The Descent of Man’, Westminster Review 42:2 (October, 1872), p. 398

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.

‘The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex’, Athenaeum (March 1871), p. 276

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.

Did Darwin and his collaborators succeed in producing what was by Victorian standards a respectable work of science? While responses to Descent varied, one unified message emerges from the review literature: Discussing sexuality was, as Darwin suspected, a contentious issue.