Puts Edinburgh at the centre of pre-Darwinian evolutionary thought in the British Isles This book challenges the long-held perception that theories of evolution initially received a cold reception in British natural history circles. It shows that, in the late 1820s and 1830s, Edinburgh was witness to a veritable ferment of radical new ideas on the natural world - including speculation on the origin and evolution of life - at just the time when the young Charles Darwin was a student in the city. Highlighting the work of key evolutionary thinkers of the time, including Henry H. Cheek, Robert Grant, Robert Knox and Robert Jameson, author Bill Jenkins reveals the largely neglected role that Edinburgh and its medical school played in the history of evolutionary thought. Bill Jenkins is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of History at the University of St Andrews

Dr Bill Jenkins is a lecturer in the School of History at the University of St Andrews, working on a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust entitled 'After the Enlightenment: Scottish Intellectual Life, c.1790-c.1843'. Jenkins received his PhD at the University of Edinburgh has published several papers in key journals, including the Journal of the History of Biology, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies and British Journal for the History of Science. He is the author of Evolution Before Darwin: Theories of the Transmutation of Species in Edinburgh, 1804-1834 (EUP, 2019).