Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation is an 1844 work of speculative natural history and philosophy by Robert Chambers. Published anonymously in England, it brought together various ideas of stellar evolution with the progressive transmutation of species in an accessible narrative which tied together numerous scientific theories of the age.
Title page of the 12th edition of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1884)
Skeleton of an extinct mammoth. One of over a hundred woodcut illustrations introduced in the 10th edition of Vestiges published in 1853.
Robert Chambers, the anonymous author of Vestiges
Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802)
Robert Chambers was a Scottish publisher, geologist, evolutionary thinker, author and journal editor who, like his elder brother and business partner William Chambers, was highly influential in mid-19th-century scientific and political circles.
Chambers c. 1863
21 November 1840, copy of the Chambers' Edinburgh Journal
The grave of Robert Chambers, St Andrews Cathedral churchyard