Alfred Russel Wallace (Critical Lives)

176 Pages·2019·5.548 MB·English

by  Patrick Armstrong

Alfred Russel Wallace
Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural figures of the
modern period. Each book explores the life of the artist, writer, philosopher or architect
in question and relates it to their major works.
In the same series
Antonin Artaud David A. Shafer Frida Kahlo Gannit Ankori
Roland Barthes Andy Stafford Søren Kierkegaard Alastair Hannay
Georges Bataille Stuart Kendall Yves Klein Nuit Banai
Charles Baudelaire Rosemary Lloyd Arthur Koestler Edward Saunders
Simone de Beauvoir Ursula Tidd Akira Kurosawa Peter Wild
Samuel Beckett Andrew Gibson Lenin Lars T. Lih
Walter Benjamin Esther Leslie Pierre Loti Richard M. Berrong
John Berger Andy Merrifield Jean-François Lyotard Kiff Bamford
Leonard Bernstein Paul R. Laird Stéphane Mallarmé Roger Pearson
Joseph Beuys Claudia Mesch Thomas Mann Herbert Lehnert and Eva Wessell
Jorge Luis Borges Jason Wilson Gabriel García Márquez Stephen M. Hart
Constantin Brancusi Sanda Miller Karl Marx Paul Thomas
Bertolt Brecht Philip Glahn Herman Melville Kevin J. Hayes
Charles Bukowski David Stephen Calonne Henry Miller David Stephen Calonne
Mikhail Bulgakov J.A.E. Curtis Yukio Mishima Damian Flanagan
William S. Burroughs Phil Baker Eadweard Muybridge Marta Braun
John Cage Rob Haskins Vladimir Nabokov Barbara Wyllie
Albert Camus Edward J. Hughes Pablo Neruda Dominic Moran
Fidel Castro Nick Caistor Georgia O’Keeffe Nancy J. Scott
Paul Cézanne Jon Kear Octavio Paz Nick Caistor
Coco Chanel Linda Simon Pablo Picasso Mary Ann Caws
Noam Chomsky Wolfgang B. Sperlich Edgar Allan Poe Kevin J. Hayes
Jean Cocteau James S. Williams Ezra Pound Alec Marsh
Salvador Dalí Mary Ann Caws Marcel Proust Adam Watt
Guy Debord Andy Merrifield Arthur Rimbaud Seth Whidden
Claude Debussy David J. Code John Ruskin Andrew Ballantyne
Gilles Deleuze Frida Beckman Jean-Paul Sartre Andrew Leak
Fyodor Dostoevsky Robert Bird Erik Satie Mary E. Davis
Marcel Duchamp Caroline Cros Arnold Schoenberg Mark Berry
Sergei Eisenstein Mike O’Mahony Arthur Schopenhauer Peter B. Lewis
William Faulkner Kirk Curnutt Adam Smith Jonathan Conlin
Gustave Flaubert Anne Green Susan Sontag Jerome Boyd Maunsell
Michel Foucault David Macey Gertrude Stein Lucy Daniel
Mahatma Gandhi Douglas Allen Igor Stravinsky Jonathan Cross
Jean Genet Stephen Barber Pyotr Tchaikovsky Philip Ross Bullock
Allen Ginsberg Steve Finbow Leon Trotsky Paul Le Blanc
Günter Grass Julian Preece Mark Twain Kevin J. Hayes
Ernest Hemingway Verna Kale Richard Wagner Raymond Furness
Victor Hugo Bradley Stephens Alfred Russel Wallace Patrick Armstrong
Derek Jarman Michael Charlesworth Simone Weil Palle Yourgrau
Alfred Jarry Jill Fell Tennessee Williams Paul Ibell
James Joyce Andrew Gibson Ludwig Wittgenstein Edward Kanterian
Carl Jung Paul Bishop Virginia Woolf Ira Nadel
Franz Kafka Sander L. Gilman Frank Lloyd Wright Robert McCarter
Alfred Russel Wallace
Patrick Armstrong
reaktion books
In memory of Robert Thomas Keegan,
a fine scholar and an inspiring teacher, 1952–2017
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
Unit 32, Waterside
44–48 Wharf Road
London n1 7ux, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2019
Copyright © Patrick Armstrong 2019
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission
of the publishers
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain, Glasgow
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
isbn 978 1 78914 085 9
Contents
Abbreviations 7
Preface 8
1 Early Life 11
2 South American Journey 29
3 Eight Years in Southeast Asia 48
4 The Natural Selection Insight and Its Aftermath 73
5 The Maturing Scientist 85
6 The Radical and the Heretic 105
7 To the End of the Universe 127
8 ‘A Contented Man’ 136
9 Some Thoughts on Wallace’s Mind and Character 148

Chronology 161
References 164
Select Bibliography 171
Acknowledgements 173
Photo Acknowledgements 174

Abbreviations
The following abbreviations have been used for quotations in the text
from Wallace’s principal works.
ccd The Correspondence of Charles Darwin (Cambridge, 1985–)
Life My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions, 2 vols (London, 1905)
For Life vols i and ii, the abbreviation is followed by the volume
and page number
ma The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird
of Paradise. A Narrative of Travel with Studies of Man and Nature
(London, 1869). There have been many editions of this work,
and so the chapter is indicated, not the page. A very useful
recent edition is The Annotated Malay Archipelago, ed. J. van
Wyhe (Singapore, 2015)
W. Cent. The Wonderful Century: Its Successes and Its Failures (London,
1898)
Narrative Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro: With an
Account of the Native Tribes, and Observations on the Climate,
Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley (London,
1853; 2nd edn 1889)
World The World of Life: A Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive
of Life Mind and Ultimate Purpose (London, 1910)
Access to most of Wallace’s publications, and much other material,
is available at ‘Wallace Online’, see http://wallace-online.org
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Preface
Alfred Russel Wallace was the joint discoverer, with Charles Darwin,
of evolution through natural selection. But while Darwin’s name is
immediately recognized, fewer people remember the part that
Wallace played.
One biography of Wallace was entitled Darwin’s Moon, implying
that perhaps he rotated around Darwin, or was eclipsed by him.
Another, more recent, In Darwin’s Shadow, seems to be saying that
he was completely overshadowed by Darwin. This is unfortunate, as
Wallace had in some ways the more interesting life. He was, without
doubt, Darwin’s superior in terms of eccentricity and was probably
more active in a greater number of fields.
Wallace’s contribution was enormous. He wrote some 22 books
and approaching 1,000 articles and other publications. He was a
political activist and controversialist in a way that Darwin never was
– even allowing for the hornets’ nest that the latter’s On the Origin
of Species stirred up in the years after its publication in 1859. Wallace
lived to a great age, from the first quarter of the nineteenth century
until the eve of the First World War. It is entirely appropriate that
he be considered in his own right.
Darwin had advantages: he came from a well-to-do family and
was educated at Shrewsbury School, Edinburgh Medical School and
Christ’s College, Cambridge. He was at the centre of things at the
same time as Wallace was wandering round the group of islands
that is now Indonesia. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species had been
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twenty years in the making and set the agenda for evolutionary
debate for the next century, whereas no single work by Wallace
had anything like the same impact, although Darwinism (1889),
titled as a tribute to his colleague, and The World of Life (1910) were
significant summaries in their time.
Alfred Russel Wallace rose to eminence through his own efforts,
without the advantages of class, background and education. At one
stage he described himself in his youth as ‘a very dull, ignorant and
ill-educated person’, but later he was certainly the opposite of all
these things. And matters would have been very different were it
not for Wallace’s letter to Darwin in June 1858, and the speedy,
and much-debated, decision of colleagues Charles Lyell and Joseph
Dalton Hooker to put a joint presentation – consisting of Wallace’s
paper plus a couple of statements of Darwin’s ideas – before the
Linnean Society a few weeks later. Without this, the world might
have had to wait years for the doctrine of evolution through natural
selection. The world would have been very different.
This book attempts, occasionally, to make comparisons
between these two intellectual giants of nineteenth-century science.
However, the aim is, first and foremost, to provide – in a compact
form – the essential facts of the life and work of Alfred Russel
Wallace, and to show he was a many-sided, complex character,
to which the title ‘The Great Victorian Polymath’ is appropriately
given.
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