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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.
''Vestiges'' was initially well received by polite Victorian society and became an international bestseller, but its unorthodox themes contradicted the natural theology fashionable at the time and were reviled by clergymen – and subsequently by scientists who readily found fault with its amateurish deficiencies. The ideas in the book were favoured by Radicals, but its presentation remained popular with a much wider public. Prince Albert read it aloud to Queen Victoria in 1845. ''Vestiges'' caused a shift in popular opinion which – Charles Darwin believed – prepared the public mind for the scientific theories of evolution by natural selection which followed from the publication of ''On the Origin of Species'' in 1859.
For decades there was speculation about its authorship. The 12th edition, published in 1884, revealed officially that the author was Robert Chambers, a Scottish journalist, who had written the book in St Andrews between 1841 and 1844 while recovering from a psychiatric illness. Originally, Chambers had proposed the title ''The Natural History of Creation'', but friends persuaded him to revise the title in deference to the Scottish geologist James Hutton, who had remarked of the timeless aspect of geology: "no ''vestige'' of a beginning, no ''prospect'' of an end". Some of the inspiration for the work derived from the Edinburgh Phrenological Society whose materialist influence reached a climax between 1825 and 1840. George Combe, the leading proponent of phrenological thinking, had published his influential ''The Constitution of Man'' in 1828. Chambers was closely involved with Combe's associates William A.F. Browne and Hewett Cottrell Watson who did much to spell out the materialist theory of the mind. Chambers died in 1871 and is buried in the grounds of St Andrews Cathedral, within the ancient chapel of St Regulus.
==Publication==
The book was published by John Spriggs Morss Churchill in London. Great pains were undertaken to secure the secret of the authorship from Churchill, and the public. After Chambers completed each section, his wife copied the manuscript, because Chambers was well known in the trade. Alexander Ireland of Manchester delivered the manuscript to the publisher. Proofs were delivered by the printer—a Mr. Savill—back to Ireland, who forwarded them to Chambers. Chambers gave the secret to only four people: his wife, his brother William, Ireland, and Robert Cox. All correspondence to and from Chambers went through Ireland as intermediary.〔Ireland, "Introduction to the Twelfth Edition," in . Two years after the initial publication, in 1846, a Dr. Neil Arnott was also added to this tight inner circle.〕
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