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vi, 374 pp. With 7 heliotype plates (3 folding) after photographs by Oscar Gustave Rejlander and with additional wood engravings in text. (8vo) 18x12.5 cm (7x5"), later quarter calf over marbled boards, all edges marbled. First edition, third state.

 “The Expression of the Emotions…” was a significant contribution to evolutionary theory and one of the first books to be illustrated with photographic heliotype (i.e., photogravure) plates. An early printing with the title page with the "tenth thousand" notice and dated 1873. This had been rebound without the frontispiece, half title, errata or publishers ads, but with all 7 plates. Numbers 1, 2 & 6 folding. In rebinding, plate 1 is now the frontispiece, having been moved from p.148. Darwin reduced the number of commonly observed emotions from Duchenne's calculation of more than sixty to just six "core" expressions: anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness and sadness.  It was written "in part at least, as a confutation of the idea that the facial muscles of expression in man were a special endowment" (Freeman pp. 15-16). 

"'With this book Darwin founded the study of ethology (animal behavior) and conveyance of information (communication theory) and made a major contribution to psychology.”  The work contains studies of facial and other types of expression (sound, erection of hair, etc.) in man and other mammals, and their correlation with various emotions such as grief, love, anger, fear and shame. The results of Darwin’s investigations showed that in many cases an expression is not learned but innate.  This enabled Darwin to formulate three principles - relief of sensation or desire, antithesis, and reflex action - governing the expression of emotions" [Jeremy Norman, # 600].