Darwin’s Origin of Species draft at risk of foreign sale

IT was the text that revolution- ised our understanding of evolution and assured Charles Darwin’s place in history.

But now a handwritten page from the naturalist’s draft of his tome On the Origin of Species is at risk of leaving the UK unless a buyer can be found.

The 1859 page, which has a market value of nearly half a million pounds, even contains a reference to the pioneering concept of ‘natural selection’.

Together with two other pages in danger of ending up with a foreign collector, they reveal how Darwin constantly revised his work. The pages from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872, are valued at £200,000 and £137,500.

The items were about to be sold off but arts minister Michael Ellis has now put an export bar on them until May to give buyers a chance to keep them in the UK. Mr Ellis said: ‘It is right that we do what we can to preserve these valuable items for the nation.’

Emma Darwin, the scientist’s great-great-granddaughter and author of This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin, said: ‘Britain’s heritage of worldchanging scientific discovery is second-to-none and it would be a tragedy if this crucial evidence of some of the greatest scientific thinking ever was to disappear abroad.’