Charles Lyell - Principles of Geology

PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY

CHARLES LYELL was born in November 1797 at Kinnordy House near Kirriemuir, Forfarshire, Scotland, and was the son of a botanist. His family moved to Hampshire, on the border of the New Forest, before he was one year old. Lyell was educated at Ringwood, Salisbury, Midhurst and Exeter College, Oxford, from which he graduated in classics in 1819. He entered Lincolns Inn to study law, but a weakness in his eyes temporarily prevented him from continuing, a difficulty which increased in later years. He published his first scientific papers in 1825 and in the following year became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Lyell also began contributing to the Quarterly Review and gradually abandoned legal practice, having found his vocation in authorship. The first volume of his masterpiece Principles of Geology was published in 1830, and the second and third volumes appeared in 1832 and 1833 respectively. Lyells vision of a world shaped by uniformly acting natural processes became central to public controversy about the place of human beings in nature. Its impact is evident in a wide range of Victorian literary, philosophical and scientific works, notably those of Charles Darwin, who became a close friend. In 1831 Lyell was appointed a professor of geology at Kings College, London (although he soon resigned), and a year later he married Mary Horner, who assisted in his work and became a leading hostess in metropolitan intellectual society. He was elected President of the Geological Society of London in 18357 and 184951. A great admirer of the United States, Lyell lectured extensively there, and in 1845 and 1849 he published lively descriptions of his travels in North America. He continued to revise Principles of Geology, which appeared in its final two-volume form in 18678. Among his other books, all of which appeared in many editions, are Elements of Geology (1838) and The Antiquity of Man (1863). He was knighted in 1848 and became a baronet in 1864. His health deteriorated rapidly after the death of Lady Lyell in 1873, but he continued with research until his death in 1875. He is buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey.

J IM SEGORD is a lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, he studied geology, literature and history at Pomona College and Princeton University, and has lived in England since 1980. He is the author of Controversy in Victorian Geology (1986), editor of Robert Chamberss Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1994) and co-editor (with N. Jardine and E. Spary) of Cultures of Natural History (1996).

Charles Lyell

Edited with an introduction by
JAMES A. SEGORD

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England

www.penguin.com

First published 183033
This selected text published in Penguin Classics 1997
13

This edition copyright James A. Secord, 1997
All rights reserved

The moral right of the editor has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-193680-2