The Malay Archipelago

Long considered one of the greatest travel books ever written, this vivid account of Alfred Russel Wallace’s eight-year exploration of Southeast Asia between 1854 and 1862 has never been out of print.

Wallace’s travels led him to develop the theory of evolution by natural selection independently of Charles Darwin, and his and Darwin’s theories were jointly proposed in a paper to the Linnean Society in 1858. Wallace also accumulated 125,660 specimens, including more than 5,000 species new to western science, establishing his reputation as the nineteenth century’s leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species.

This handsome facsimile has been reproduced from Wallace’s personal copy of the tenth edition and includes handwritten annotations. This edition was published in 1890, 28 years after the first, and has additional information from subsequent collectors and footnotes in which Wallace corrects some earlier errors.

It also features illustrations by contemporary artists such as Thomas Baines, Walter Hood Fitch and TW Wood, and includes two fold-out colour maps of the archipelago, one showing the routes taken and the other the volcanic belts in the region. There is also a new foreword by Sandra Knapp, President of the Linnean Society (2018-2022).

The hardback is both a beautiful gift as well as an authentic scholarly reference book - enjoy your own travels with it.