ODYSSEY

A fresh look at Charles Darwin’s famed voyage.

Drawing on Darwin’s notes and letters as well as those of his acquaintances, Chaffin chronicles the naturalist’s legendary journey on the Beagle. Most readers are familiar with Darwin’s exploration of the Galápagos Islands and his book On the Origin of Species. Chaffin takes us deeper into his subject’s life. “I’ve accorded primacy to writings created during [the Beagle] journeys: his diary, field notebooks, and letters,” he writes. “For further illumination, I’ve also drawn on the correspondence, memoirs, and diaries of others he encountered or traveled with during those years….This lively portrait…lurks just beneath the more public surfaces of Voyage of the Beagle and Origin of Species. Notably, it depicts formative experiences in the naturalist’s life unfound in—in some cases, deliberately excluded from—those two works.” In his late adolescence and early adulthood, Darwin spent many years adrift, bored with schooling and trying to figure out what to do with his life. Through circumstance and opportunity, he boarded the Beagle, which spent considerable time in and around South America. During that time, of course, Darwin kept meticulous notes on plant and animal species. In addition to expected descriptions of the flora and fauna, Chaffin examines the motivations of the expedition’s leaders as well as Darwin’s observations on politics, slavery, Indigenous populations, and his fellow shipmates, who were largely left out of his published works. Additionally, writes the author, while Darwin’s field notes included significant observations about a wide range of natural science topics, “the islands proved, for him, initially disappointing, and provided no eureka moment.” Nonetheless, Chaffin shows how the trip “would lead him to reformulate many past assumptions” and inform his future work. Late in his career, Darwin noted that “the voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career.”

A well-written overview of Darwin’s formative experiences.