A man of such renown has been written up in many volumes. His letters and his self-knowledge have won readers for more than a century now. A few of his intimate recollections are presented here in one small volume, most helpfully. But to Darwin's own candor and depth of memory the editor--a scholar and a person plainly admiring this great and modest man--has linked the living witness of a dozen people of many kinds who visited, questioned, even quarreled with the biologist.

As in a well-made play, the qualities of Darwin's character unfold from the tales. Here is the child with a conscience, who admitted to made-up wonders--and soon regrets the deception. Here is Alfred Wallace, the specimen collector from Indonesia, who wrote a brief paper to Darwin himself to seek aid in publishing the essay that described in brief the very theory Darwin had spent twenty years documenting to convince the wide world. Alfred Walllace sent it to that very man just as Darwin's big treatise was newly ready. What is wonderful is how Darwin and Wallace understood that stroke of fate, and remained lifelong friends in the face of the celebrity Darwin won and deserved, as Wallace's insight was given what was due him.

Here are Darwin's friends--Huxleys, Hooker, his cousin Galton, his devoted sons--recalling family life. Here too is the feminist author Harriet Martineau, guest at the Darwin's a few times, and her estimate of this man. The power of this pageant of commentary is all but unique among biographies, even though nothing really new is here.

Most touching--and most winning--of all is the little-read narrative by father Charles himself of the life of his oldest daughter Ann, who died at ten years age of a delayed effect of scarlet fever. With no sentimentality, but with discernment and love, he writes: "She had a truly feminine interest in dress...such undisguised satisfaction escaping somehow all tinge of conceit & vanity beamed from her face, when she got hold of some ribbon...of her mamma's."

True simplicity, dignity, and precise perceptions shine from this book of many writers (a few of them enemies of Darwin's). It is a model of compilation, and would repay a wide readership even if it were the drama of a comfortable undistinguished Victorian, and not that of arguably the most influential of scientists and his wide circle.

Philip & Phylis Morrison